


All I Can Give

by Havoka



Category: The Walking Dead (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2049774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Havoka/pseuds/Havoka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Constantly fleeing death in the car he now lives in, Eddie attempts to siphon gas from what he assumes is an abandoned RV. He soon realizes that he's not the only survivor trying to make it alone in this world, and that giving something, even a little hope, can touch the most hardened of hearts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Redefine

_Shit. I'm almost out of gas._

The gauge blinked desperately at him. Its needle hovered dangerously close to the 'E' light, a sight he'd become all too familiar with over the past few months. Eddie pulled his hat down a bit, studying the dark road in front of him. He'd been driving for so long now. It felt like driving was all he ever did anymore. And of course, he never had a destination.

The supplies in his trunk and backseat had managed to keep him alive thus far, though just barely. He was running low on food now, and it was getting harder to find things to eat out in the wild. He'd never been a hunter.

Gas was equally difficult to come by. Most of the cars he found had already been siphoned dry by scavengers long ago. Eventually, he knew, he was going to have to stop driving and start traveling on foot. That thought absolutely terrified him. There was nothing out there – no rest stops, no safe places to crash for a night. No mercy from anyone, living or dead. It would just be him, his wits, and whatever supplies he could manage to carry on him.

The car sputtered. The gas gauge had dropped its needle to E, and the car was just rolling now. “Shit. Shit shit shit.” He stomped the gas pedal. Once. Twice. The third time, practically to the floor. Nothing happened. “ _Shit._ ”

Eddie steered the car to the shoulder of the road on its last bit of momentum. When it finally came to a halt, he laid his forehead on the steering wheel. “I'm fucked. I'm so fucked.” He was out in the middle of nowhere. He couldn't see another vehicle anywhere nearby.

Unless he wanted to carry everything he had on his back, or leave it all behind, he needed to find some gas. Quickly.

He popped the trunk with the button by his left hand. Then he slipped out the door and closed it silently behind him.

A few shuffling figures marred the thick fog down the road, the way he'd come. They must have been following the noise of his engine. Doing his best to ignore the oncoming monsters, Eddie crept back to the trunk and fished out his siphoning gear – a stained length of tubing and a red plastic gas can. He closed the trunk as quietly as he could and hurried down the road, away from the walkers. There had to be some gas left around here. Some vehicle, somewhere,  _had_ to still have gas in it.

He just hoped he could get that far on foot.

His car's engine having gone silent, some of the less persistent walkers seemed to lose interest. They wandered off into the surrounding woods and disappeared. Eddie allowed himself a moment of relief, despite being fully aware that there were still some walkers following him. They were in the far distance, and they moved slowly. If things went well he would be able to siphon some gas before they reached him. And in case they got a little too close for comfort, he had his favorite knife in his pocket as well.

Being outside his car at night gave him an idea of just how quiet the world had gotten. He hadn't even realized before just how noisy things had been – pre-apocalypse there was no such thing as total silence. Busy streets, people talking, and the general sounds of human life had constantly filled that void. It was almost frightening, this newfound silence. It served as a constant reminder of how alone he was. How alone most survivors were. How much of the human race had been wiped off the planet.

And yet, life continued on. Crickets were chirping, loud as ever, and every so often a bat passed overhead. These creatures didn't need humans to survive. In fact, they were probably thriving without them.

Eddie scratched his arm, staring blankly ahead. There were a few vehicles scattered here and there down the road, but they looked trashed. He didn't have much hope of them holding any gasoline. Regardless, he pressed onward.

The first car he came across was a smashed-up Nissan Altima. All four of its windows were completely obliterated. A few shards of glass hung from their edges like jagged teeth, daring any brave soul to reach their hand in there and try not to get cut. Luckily, what Eddie needed wasn't from the car's blood-stained interior. He popped open the gas door and took a whiff. Only the faintest ghost of gasoline smell greeted him. As he'd figured, the car was drained.

He continued his trudge down the long road before him. A forest green pickup truck was his next target. This one had a walker inside. It banged weakly on the window as Eddie checked the gas tank. Again, nothing.

_I might really be fucked this time._ He couldn't go much farther without risking losing his way back to his car. And there wasn't another vehicle in sight the way he was headed, anyway. _This is terrible. I'm gonna have to leave my car behind._

Sighing deeply, he decided to turn around and head back. If nothing else, he could at least spend one more night sleeping in the car before he had to leave it. It was probably the last decent night's rest he'd ever get.

The walkers that had been following him were enthusiastic to see him turn around. Their rotting arms reached outward as they stumbled down the otherwise-empty road. Shifting his gas can and tubing to his left hand, Eddie pulled his knife from his right pocket and glanced down at it. He couldn't run from them forever.

The first walker went down easily. One stab to the forehead and it collapsed to the ground. The others, seemingly a bit less decayed than the almost-skeletal first one, put up more of a fight. One of the monsters managed to catch hold of his wrist while he was driving his knife downward. It opened its mouth, flashing its yellow teeth as it attempted to snap them shut on his skin. He elbowed the thing in its gut, knocking it back a step, then stuck the knife right into its eye socket. It crumpled into a bloodied heap and he stepped over it.

A few dropped walkers later, he was alone again. His car came into view, a hunk of darkness in the mist. He crept toward it. _At least I'll have one more safe night,_ he thought as he rested his hand on the driver's side handle.

The door popped open quietly. As he leaned into his car to hit the trunk button again, he noticed something out the passenger window. Off the road, a short way into the woods, a large vehicle sat butted up against a tree. Partially obscured by underbrush and fog, Eddie couldn't really tell what kind of vehicle it was – just that it was large and rectangular. Judging by the size of it, it probably had a sizable gas tank.

He pulled back out of the car. Maybe he wasn't so fucked after all.

Carrying his siphoning gear over to the other side of the car, he squinted into the forest. From what he could see, the vehicle looked to be an old, beat-up RV. There didn't seem to be any sort of camp set up around it, nor did he see any lights on inside of it. He decided to approach it cautiously. Survivors had snuck up on him in the woods before.

Up close he could confirm that it was, in fact, an RV. Its blinds were all pulled down. It was stained with blood along the tires, and a few bullet holes littered its side. It had obviously seen a lot in its day.

Unlike the other vehicles, he couldn't see inside the RV to check if it was empty. He decided to creep around to the front and peer in through the windshield. No living thing presented itself to him there. The RV looked abandoned. _It's gotta be abandoned. It has to be. I need this gas._

He tiptoed back around the vehicle, to the gas door near the back. Setting his jug on the grass, he popped the door open, unscrewed the gas cap and took a sniff. The smell of gasoline assailed him. _Fuck yes._ He quickly fed his tube into the tank and drew one end to his mouth. Kneeling beside the RV, he listened hard for any alarming noises for a brief moment. He heard nothing. Only a faint autumn breeze caused any disturbance around him, rustling the multicolored leaves in the trees all around. Still he was wary, and his hands trembled as he clutched the plastic tube.

Wrapping his lips carefully around the held end of the tubing, he sucked just hard enough to draw some fuel into it. Then he quickly detached his mouth and let the precious gasoline drip into the jug. _All right. We're getting there._ He shook the tube dry, then lifted it to his mouth once more. _Just a little more and I'll be good to-_

Two wiry arms seized him from behind. He cried out, dropping everything as he struggled in the grip of the stranger holding him.

A knife blade prodded the soft skin of his throat. _His_ knife blade. He froze, staring straight ahead, unable to move without the blade jabbing at him. “P-please don't kill me.” he squeaked to the unknown person, his voice cracking. “I just needed some gas. I thought this thing was abandoned. If it's not, that's – that's fine. I'll leave right now.”

The attacker leaned in close to him. He could smell dirty leather and unwashed flesh on them, a chokingly strong scent.

“You made a big fucking mistake,” a harsh, feminine voice hissed in his ear. The knife tip poked at the tender flesh of his throat once more. “Trying to steal from me.”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry.” He tried to turn his head a little, just far enough to see the person holding him. He couldn't turn enough. Her grip on him was too strong. “I didn't know it belonged to anyone. I swear.”

The woman had him in an unbelievably tight hold. It was as if he were seatbelted in, with no way to unlock himself. He could feel her every breath on his neck, sending a shiver of sheer terror through him.

“Please don't kill me, man.” he whimpered. “I'll give you whatever you want.”

The knife eased from his throat. The woman shoved her hands into the pockets of his jeans, digging around inside them. He tried to quell his shaking as she fished around his baggy front pockets.

The woman huffed. “You don't even have anything besides this knife. Which I'm keeping.”

He swallowed. “It's all in my car.”

“Where's your car.”

He raised his right arm slowly, gesturing back to the vehicle.

The woman grabbed him and threw him to the ground. She had him pinned before he could even recover from the blow, her hands pushing both of his wrists down into the dirt. From that angle, he managed to get a good look at her. Her skin was sallow and pale, contrasted by a mane of greasy brown hair and two piercing brown eyes. The leather he smelled was from her jacket, a filthy black layer over a stained gray undershirt. All of her clothing, down to her dirt-caked jeans, hung off her emaciated frame. She looked as if she hadn't eaten much of anything in quite a long time.

Her wide, searching eyes glared down at him. He stared hopelessly up at her, wondering if he was going to die right then and there. He probably was, he reasoned. And it was his own fault. He should've checked more thoroughly to see if anyone was living in that RV. He was no better than a looter.

“Give me the keys to your car.” the woman growled.

“They're in the ignition.” Eddie turned his head as much as he could, glancing up at the RV's open gas door. “But I'm out of gas. You can't get anywhere in it.”

She climbed off of him. Eddie breathed a sigh of relief, thankful she hadn't opted to slit his throat right then and there. As he attempted to clamber to his feet, the woman shook her head. “No, you're staying right where you are.”

A clunky, workboot-clad right foot was the next thing he saw from her. It stomped downward, right between his legs. A mangled cry fled his lungs as she ground her boot heel directly into his balls.

Seemingly satisfied with his incapacitation, she tucked a hunk of hair behind her ear and then headed for his car.

 


	2. Vitamin

It took Eddie several minutes to recover from the agony of having his balls crushed by a boot heel. Staggering to his feet at long last, he carefully approached his car. The woman was hustling back toward the RV, carrying a cardboard box of supplies under each arm.

“H-hey,” he called weakly, still struggling to walk normally without crying in pain, “You can't just take all my stuff. I need it.”

She paused just long enough to glare at him. Then she resumed toting his boxes to her vehicle.

_I can't let her do this. I'll die without food or water._

She was already halfway back to the car. When she reached it he watched her pull a sealed water bottle out from one of the boxes, unscrew the cap and take a swig. After closing it again she tossed it back in its box and hefted the whole thing into her arms.

There was a gun in his glove box. If he could get to it, he could stop her.

Obviously regarding him as no threat, the woman strolled by with the box she'd been rooting through. As soon as she disappeared around the side of the RV, Eddie made a break for his car. He threw the front passenger door open, climbed in and opened the glove box. From the corner of his eye he saw the woman reappear and start running toward him. He managed to fish out the pistol before backing out of the car and turning to face her. Shakily, he pointed the gun at her head.

The woman immediately tensed. She held her hands out in front of her, watching him carefully.

“G-give me my stuff back.” Eddie demanded, his tone less than intimidating. “I'm sorry I stole from you, but that doesn't mean you can just take my shit and leave me with nothing.”

“Why not?” She took a step forward, terrifying even with a gun pointed at her. “That's how things are now. You take everything you can from a person, all they can give you, until you leave them with nothing.” She looked him dead in the eye. “It happens to all of us.”

“It doesn't have to.” He lowered the gun just the slightest bit. “We don't have to live like that. We can...we can share, or something. I don't know. Maybe you could give me some gas, and I could give you some supplies, and then we'd both be better off than we were. And neither of us would have to die over it.” He didn't want to take another life. The first time had been horrifying enough.

A long silence hovered between them. Eddie kept the gun out, low-aimed but still pointed in the woman's general direction. She looked him over, her eyes flicking from him to his gun and then back to him again.

“Do you...” He cleared his throat, stalling a bit. “Do you want to trade?”

She combed her fingers through her matted hair and cast a glance back toward her RV. Eddie stood by, nervous, waiting for an answer.

“Okay.” the woman finally said. “I'll give you some gas. You give me some supplies. Then we part ways.”

Gripped with relief, Eddie found himself smiling a little. “Great.” His negotiating skills had never been very strong, and he was rarely able to talk his way out of bad situations. This was a first for him. “You can have that water you drank out of, by the way. No offense, but I don't want your backwash.”

She strode over to him, eyes full of confidence. Despite the fact that he was the one with the gun, not her, her attitude made it clear that she was the one in charge of the situation. He was just a facilitator. “I already took everything you had.” she uttered, leaning her face close to his. She was tall, he noticed. They were practically the same height. “You're lucky you ran across someone who hasn't totally embraced this world's fucked-up mentality yet. Someone who still gives a shit about the survival of other people.” She drew back from him. “Because let me tell you, there are a lot of fucking people out here who would've killed you tonight.”

“I-I know.” He drew in a hesitant breath, letting it out before he blurted out anything he'd regret. He was used to rambling, and in situations like this he knew words mattered and that less was often more. “I appreciate you, uh, not killing me.”

She looked him over once again. Her eyes were predatory, searching his for any trace of vulnerability. He became hyperaware of the fact that he was still trembling. Even showing mercy, this woman was intimidating as all hell.

“You going to siphon that gas, or what?” She jerked a thumb back toward the jug and tubing that lay on the grass beneath her open gas cap. “I've got all your supplies in my RV already. I could drive away at any second and leave you with nothing.”

“Okay. Okay. I'll get on that.” He approached the RV with the woman following behind him. She was still clutching his knife, turning it over in her palm. She had his best weapon. No way was he going to fire a gun in the middle of a walker-filled forest, and she knew that. That was why she was still so bold and in control of the situation. Regardless, he kept the gun pointed in her general direction as he knelt down on the grass and picked up his siphoning gear.

“All right, I just need a little. Just...enough to get me to somewhere with more cars.” He slipped the tubing back into the open gas tank once more. Setting the jug upright on the grass, he lowered his lips to the other end of the tube and prepared to draw some gas out of the tank. The woman watched him with her arms folded.

A twig snapped in the distance. Eddie froze. The woman whipped around, locking immediately on to the source of the sound.

“Oh shit.” Eddie scrambled to his feet as a handful of walkers limped out of the surrounding forest. _They must have been drawn by us talking._ A handful soon turned into a small horde as more monsters stumbled out from between the trees. This was the group that had been following his car.

The woman was gone in a flash. She bolted for the door of her RV, jumping in and slamming it behind her. Moments later she appeared in the driver's seat, starting up the old vehicle.

“Wait!” Eddie ran for the front of the RV. “I don't have any gas! I can't get away. You gotta let me in or something!”

She glanced down momentarily at him. Then she backed the RV up, turned it to face the street, and punched the gas. She sped off down the road, disappearing into the night fog.

“Fuck! _Fuck!_ ” With nowhere else to go, Eddie ran for his deadened car.


	3. New Skin

_Fuck._

He never should have tried to negotiate. He should have shot that woman when he'd had the chance.

Walkers pounded on his windows from all angles, trying desperately to get into his car. Eddie huddled down in his seat, remaining as still as possible.  _I'm screwed. I am so screwed._

Even if he survived this attack, he no longer had any supplies to survive with. In the miraculous event he managed to make it til morning, he'd starve or dehydrate before long.

She'd taken everything. Absolutely everything. Even the bag of weed he kept under the backseat. Everything.

The minutes ticked by. Relentless, the walkers continued beating on the car with their rotten hands. Eddie tried one last time to get his car moving. It wouldn't budge. It was completely drained.

He buried his hand in his hands. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” His cussing echoed the rhythmic pounding of fists on his windows.  _I'm dead._

What a stupid, pointless way to go. All because he couldn't muster the nerve to kill that woman.

Interrupting his wallowing, two beams of light flooded his car's interior. Momentarily blinded, Eddie struggled to see what was coming at him. It was a large vehicle, he realized, bearing down on his tiny car head-on.  _Oh my God, what now?_

The noise of the vehicle drew the walkers toward it. They staggered straight into its path, reaching eagerly toward the light. The vehicle sped up, colliding with two of them and sending the monsters flying.

The RV's wipers flicked on, clearing the dark blood from the windshield. The clean glass exposed, very clearly, the woman from earlier.

She tore through a few more walkers, hitting them at an angle and speed that ensured they did not get stuck under the vehicle. The impact tossed them safely out of her path. Slowing down beside Eddie's car, she stopped when their doors were aligned.

Incredulous, Eddie inched his door open. He could no longer see the woman at the angle they were at. She seemed to be waiting for him, though. Scooping up his gun and siphoning gear from the passenger seat, he slipped out of his vehicle and quickly tugged open the door to hers.

“You came back,” he breathed, slamming the door behind him. The first thing he noticed inside the RV were his supply boxes, stacked neatly under a table in the back of the vehicle. They seemingly hadn't been touched yet.

The woman stomped on the gas pedal. Eddie lurched forward, just barely catching himself on the handle of an overhead cabinet. Struggling not to lose his balance in the moving vehicle, he carefully made his way up to the front of the RV.

As the walkers faded into the distance, the woman began to slow down. Eddie leaned on the back of the driver's seat and cleared his throat.

“I see you.” she responded, not turning to face him.

He realized she was eying him in the rearview mirror. He backed off a bit.

“Why did you save me?” he asked.

She nodded to the passenger seat. Still hesitant, Eddie cautiously slid into it.

“A long time ago,” she eventually said, “Someone had the choice to leave me to die out on the road.” She stared straight ahead, concentrating only on the path before them. “They didn't.”

Eddie scratched at his stubble as he stared at her. She broke her forward gaze to study him for just a moment. Her eyes were fierce, but they held a tiny spark of warmth.

“I couldn't leave an innocent person to die. I'm not...a monster.”

“Oh. Well, uh, thanks.”

She nodded, eyes averted once again.

Eddie shifted in the seat and then glanced out the side window. His view was of nothing but trees and dead bodies scattered along the side of the road. If this woman hadn't shown up when she did, he would've soon become one of those many bodies. Actually, considering there wouldn't have been anyone around to put a bullet in his head, he probably would've been  _eating_ those bodies.

“So...” he dared after a long silence, “You with any kind of group, or anything?”

“Are you?” The question was shot back at him with surprising venom.

“No.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at nothing in particular. “I've been on my own for a while now.”

“Same here.”

After that initial bit of conversation, they once again fell into an uncomfortable silence. Eddie let his thoughts wander, pondering just where they were headed. The initial shock of being attacked by both a human and a group of walkers was beginning to wear off. He was starting to realize the gravity of his current situation.  _Shit, man...my car's gone. It's gone._ He was probably never going to see it again. And now he was with this terrifying woman, traveling to some strange place, completely at her mercy.

This would happen to him.  _My life is so fucked up._

But the woman had saved him. Twice, really. She could have killed him when he was robbing her of her gasoline. She didn't. Then she'd had every reason in the world to keep going when he was trapped in his car, to leave him in the dust, to let him fend for himself without any weapons or supplies. Instead she'd returned to him, and risked herself to save his life.

It didn't make sense. The only possible explanation was that, perhaps, her outward viciousness did not run all the way through to her core. That somewhere inside was a caring person, just hardened by all the shit the past four-ish months had thrown at the human race. She wouldn't have rescued him if she was heartless. There must have been something that motivated her to save his life.

He would just have to uncover it.

“So,” he said after a while, “What's your name?”

She hesitated.

“Mine's Eddie.”

“...Lilly.”

He smiled a little. “That's a pretty name.”

Lilly shot him a venomous glare.

“What?” His faint smile gave way to a fearful frown. Damn, this woman was intimidating.

“I'm waiting for the 'that's such an unfitting name for you' comment.” she said flatly.

“Everybody always has one.”

“Oh. Well, I don't. I think it's a chill name. And I mean, Eddie's not much better.” He made a face. “'Edward'. Makes me sound like one of those weird old rich dudes who lives by himself in a castle and leaves ten million dollars when he dies to some relative he's never met.”

Lilly cocked an eyebrow at him. He grinned nervously.

“Mine's short for Lillian.” she murmured.

His uncertainty receded a bit. “That's cute.” Noticing her scowl, he quickly amended his words.

“I mean, that's, uh, bad-ass. Solid, stone cold bad-ass. Seriously–”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Okay.”

That hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped. He resumed staring out the window, not really paying attention to what he saw.. Every so often he snuck a glance at the woman, Lilly, who was making a conscious effort not to look at him. Not enough of a glance to really take in any details about her, but enough to build a rough mental image of what she looked like. He'd thought she was scowling at him during their exchanges both in the woods and inside the RV, but the more he saw of her the more he noticed she seemed to consistently look like she was scowling. Even just focusing on the road, her neutral expression more closely resembled one of anger or disgust. Maybe that was just how she looked all the time.

“How did you manage to survive on your own this long?” For once it was Lilly who initiated the conversation. The suddenness of her words almost startled him.

“I don't really know.” His idle fingers tugged at his hat, pulling it down further on his forehead. “Guess I've just kinda been hiding. Running and hiding.”

“You've got a lot of good stuff with you. I could see it even from outside the car.”

“Yeah, I packed it all up when this started. Me and my friend, we were gonna try to get the hell out of Georgia. Figured...maybe it hadn't spread as much everywhere else.”

“Is your friend dead now?” Her question was devoid of emotion. It still disturbed him to think like that, to treat death like an everyday occurrence. But who knew how much of it she'd seen in the past few months.

“He might be.” Eddie lowered his eyes. “I haven't seen him in like three months. We got separated from each other.”

“So you've been alone for three months, with all these supplies, and no one's ever attacked you for them?”

“No. I try to keep moving as much as I can, and when I sleep I park my car in places nobody's likely to see it.”

She nodded to herself. “Guess it makes sense you're still alive then. You have survivor instincts.”

Eddie scratched the sweaty skin under his hat. “I do?” He'd assumed he was just lucky.

“Of course. You have a prey animal mentality. Instead of fighting, you run and hide. It might not be the most respectable tactic, but it keeps you alive.”

He stopped fidgeting long enough to consider her words. A prey animal mentality? Was she implying he was a coward?

“I fight when I have to.” he decided to say.

Lilly released one hand's grip on the wheel, using her freed left hand to tuck a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Her neutral “scowl” was gone, replaced by a vague, almost-contented look.

A feeling of dread settled in the pit of Eddie's stomach. He probably shouldn't have let this woman get such a clear read of him.

“Of course you fight when you  _have_ to.” she said. “We all do. Even prey. But when you're not cornered, your first instinct is to run away from predators. That's how you survive.”

“I...guess?” She was trying to psych him out. He didn't want to let her, but even as she spoke his inner voice was telling him to get away from her. To run...and hide. Exactly as she was saying.

Was he really like a prey animal? Spending his life fleeing instead of fighting?

“But aren't we all kind of prey animals when there are creatures out there whose only motivation is eating us?” The counterpoint rolled off his tongue before he'd even really stopped to fully consider it. It made immediate sense.

That gave her pause. She seemed to mull his point over in her head, taking her time before responding.

“You have a point,” she finally replied, “but that's a matter of circumstance. I'm talking about people's base personalities, apocalypse notwithstanding. Your approach isn't everyone's approach. A lot of people I've seen charge headlong into this new world mentality. Becoming hunters. Seeking out...fresh meat. Eating anything they could catch.”

“So let me guess,” he said. “You're one of these big bad predator types? Some terrifying beast I should, like, live in fear of?”

Lilly chewed her bottom lip, avoiding his stare.

“No.” she murmured. “I'm a prey animal, too.”

The confession took him by surprise. Or was it really a confession? She could've just been trying to lure him into a false sense of security, thinking she was like him. They didn't seem very alike. But then again, when the walkers had shown up her first instinct had been to take off. And she'd only attacked Eddie outside the RV to defend herself. Technically, he had initiated the confrontation.

“You don't seem like prey.” he mumbled, returning his stare to the window on his right. Still nothing outside except trees. Trees and the occasional body.

“If I wasn't, you'd be dead.” She turned the wheel, sending the RV down a small road. The trees obscured the moonlight shining on the thin path, rendering the world around them even darker than before.

He made a small, thoughtful noise in response. She did have a point.

“Being prey isn't a bad thing.” she continued. “In fact, I think it's the best way to be in a setting like this. Think about it – you're the most fit, the most capable of surviving. That's how prey stay alive in the first place. You've spent your whole life learning how to escape danger, how to outwit predators, how to think outside the box to solve your problems. This world is the perfect opportunity to use those skills you've honed.”

Her words actually did make sense, and Eddie found himself agreeing with her. He'd always been like he was now – skittish, paranoid, quick to flee from bad situations. Maybe that was the reason he was still alive while so many other people had died. He'd always thought his fear held him back, but maybe it was actually keeping him one step ahead.

Lilly obviously had an agenda bringing this up. She wanted him to know that, no matter how fit for this world he may have realized he was, she was just as much so. Maybe even  _more_ fit than him. He could never have left someone in a forest full of walkers. Although she came back for him later, her first instinct had been to leave him behind and save herself. That was pretty much the ultimate survivalist prey mentality. Run away, let the predators get the weaker and less fit one.

“Even right now while I've kept you talking, I've kept you from thinking about things I don't want you to think about.” Her apathetic expression did not change. “It's a survival tactic. And you played right into it.”

Eddie blinked. He'd assumed she just wanted to make conversation.

“I bet you don't even know where we are.”

He glanced out the various windows on either side of him. It was too dark to see any real details of the outside. “I saw you turn down a road...”

“'A road'.” Lilly cut him off. “What road?”

“I-I don't know. This road.”

“There are a lot of roads in Georgia.”

“I know. I just – I wasn't paying attention for a few minutes, and-”

“That'll get you killed.” She cut him off. “Just so you know.”

He sighed, and leaned his arm against the side window. She was right. Again. He had a terrible habit of not paying attention to his surroundings. Of just letting people lead him wherever they wanted him to go. He couldn't do that anymore. Blindly following other people wasn't any way to survive in this world.

Lilly didn't speak to him the rest of the drive. They rode in silence for about ten minutes, until she pulled out onto a main road. Back in the old days he would've said it was 'civilization' – but that obviously wasn't what it was now. Abandoned cars littered the road, granting the scene an eerie appearance of being frozen in time. It looked like a traffic jam. Only when one drew nearer to the cars could a survivor see that they were all hauntingly empty. Several had doors flung open. Just as many also had open gas caps, implying they'd been drained of their precious gasoline.

Lilly navigated the RV between the cars with perfect precision. There seemed only one clear pathway through them, just large enough for the RV to barrel through. He wondered if she'd blazed that trail herself on an earlier trip.

Eddie tried to note as many details of his surroundings as he could, lest he be quizzed later.

“Where are we going?” The question that had been weighing on his mind since stepping into the RV finally broached the open air. If she got angry with him for asking, he would simply say that he was trying to be a better survivor.

“I have a place.” she responded, surprisingly open to his question. “I stay there when I'm not traveling.”

“Yeah?” Eddie stretched in his seat, trying to play calm. “What's it like?”

“We're almost there. I'll show you when we get to it.”

He still felt no trust for this mysterious woman. She'd obviously realized he liked to talk, kept him talking, and distracted him for nearly the entire ride. Who knew what other kind of mind tricks she was going to play on him?

He reminded himself of how close he'd come to dying before she'd saved him. He had nothing else. No other hope for survival. His car was gone, she had all his supplies, and she was obviously far more capable than he was. She didn't seem to be malicious, or sadistic, or evil in any way – there were far worse people he could have encountered out there.

Aside from the survival reasons compelling him to stay, he also found that just  _being_ with someone fulfilled a basic social desire he'd pushed to the side long ago. He hadn't had any human contact since he left Wyatt. It was so nice to have someone to talk to again. Even if she was just trying to keep him disoriented about their location, holding an actual conversation with someone made things feel just a little less terrible.

He wondered if she felt the same way.

Lilly slowed down at the entrance of a small retail plaza. Eddie's gaze quickly flicked over the line of stores, trying to make note of them. A nail salon. A barber shop. A pool supply store. A clothing store. She turned in to the parking lot, driving past the smashed windows of the smaller shops as she headed for the clothing store at the end of the strip.

The windows of the clothing store were largely boarded up. “Is this where you're staying?” Eddie asked, nodding to it.

When she reached the end of the strip Lilly swung the RV around back. “Yeah.” She parked it close to the back of the building, hidden from the street. “Nobody ever comes through here.”

With barely any light to see by, Eddie tried to study the back of the building. Piles of rubble blocked it off from the road, but it wasn't rubble from the store itself. Other than the sign holding its name, which had fallen off and lay in shattered pieces in front of it, the store's brick walls seemed relatively untouched.

“Grab a box and let's go.” Lilly pulled the keys out of the ignition and dropped them in her pocket. Then she hopped up out of the driver's seat and marched toward his supply boxes in the back.

Unsure what else to do, Eddie followed at her heels.


	4. Idiot Box

 

It took only a few short minutes for Lilly to have all of Eddie's supply boxes piled up inside the store's back room. The place was surprisingly untouched inside – or perhaps it had been cleaned up since the Outbreak began. Either way, it appeared secure and Eddie found himself marveling at just how strategic Lilly's choice of hideouts had been.

“It's the perfect spot, because it isn't.” She'd said that to him as they dropped his boxes down onto the dusty stone floor of the backroom. “Nobody goes looking for anything here. Nobody tries to break into this place and loot it. I wouldn't have stayed here myself – but then I discovered this room. The perfect safehouse.”

Eddie took a look around the backroom. Other than his boxes, now piled up in the corner of the room, the area was lined with metal shelves and clothing racks full of unsold merchandise. Some of the shelves were cleared, making room for the battery-operated lantern that kept the place from complete darkness, and a few half-eaten food scraps.

There wasn't much in the way of supplies, he noticed. She must have been running low on her own.

“The shelves are heavy, but movable.” Lilly demonstrated by pushing one in front of the closed door. “And since the door's the same color on the outside as the wall around it, it's easy to miss in the first place. Even if someone did try to loot the store, very few would suspect anyone to be living in here.”

The small lantern did little to light the dark room. It was cold and damp inside, and it smelled of musty clothing. Dusty coats and jackets hung on racks pushed to the edges of the room. Piles of sale signs and unused hangers cluttered up a far shelf. Like everywhere else, this place had been abandoned right in the middle of normal, everyday activities. These clothes were probably about to be put out on the floor for sale before everything happened.

Lilly shrugged off her leather jacket and fit it over a hanger. She set the hanger on the end of a rack, rather carefully, as if she didn't want it getting damaged. Underneath it she wore only a dingy gray tank top.

Without her leather layer, Lilly appeared even more pathetically malnourished. Her bare arms were nothing but taut flesh stretched over bone and muscle. Her collarbones were clearly visible above the neckline of her top, practically poking right out of her skin. He also noticed her belt was pulled to what looked like the tightest notch – and her jeans were still baggy on her.

She kicked off her boots and set them under her jacket. Her presumably-once-white socks were absolutely filthy.

“You can take your shoes off if you want.” She breezed past him, headed for the door. He watched as adjusted the shelving unit in front of the door, making certain it was completely blocking it. “Things don't get in here, and we're staying for the night.”

“What if someone sees the RV outside?” he asked. “They might come try to rob us.”

“That's why we're in the storeroom with the door blocked. And I have the keys to the RV, so they won't get anywhere that way.”

She seemed pretty confident. “Has anyone ever tried to rob you before?”

“Not here.”

“Somewhere else?”

She passed by him again and knelt down in front of his supply boxes. She opened the closest one and began rooting through it.

Noting her lack of response, Eddie decided that probably wasn't a good topic to pursue. Especially since she could have named him as someone who had tried to rob her.

Lilly's eyes widened at something in the box. She reached in and pulled out a half-eaten package of Oreos.

“Oh man, I forgot about those!” Eddie perked up a bit. They were stale as all hell, but stale cookies beat no cookies.

Lilly slid the plastic cookie tray out of the packaging. She began counting the cookies under her breath. Then she slid half of them to the other end of the package.

“Okay,” she said, “So there are sixteen here, which means eight each. If we eat one a day, we can make them last a little over a week. Or, if we went with eating one every _two_ days, they'll last over-”

“You're rationing the cookies?”  _His_ cookies, more specifically?

Lilly paused to glance over at him. “Of course. We can't just eat them all at once. That'd be stupid. Short-sighted.”

Eating them all at once  _would_ be stupid. But still...

Lilly slipped the cookie tray into its blue foil sheath and then tucked it back into the box. “Well, this gives us something to look forward to, I guess. Small as it is.”

“Yeah.”

After a while, he decided to take his shoes off. He'd been wearing them pretty much non-stop for the last few weeks. Kicking them into the corner beside Lilly's boots, he realized her shoes were significantly larger than his. It looked funny and a bit weird.

He sat down on the cold stone floor and stretched his toes. It felt nice to be able to take his shoes off for once. Hell, being able to relax at all felt nice for a change.

Of course, he couldn't be completely relaxed in the company of this possibly-dangerous stranger. But she seemed to be planning for long term cooperation between the two of them, which he took as a good sign. If she was going to kill him she'd probably have done it already.

Eddie caught himself yawning as he stretched. His vision blurred a bit, until he blinked the tiredness away.

Lilly turned to him, watching him fight sleep. “You're tired.” she noted.

“Yeah, a little.” Lying would have been pointless. She could clearly see him fighting back another yawn.

Her eyes drifted from him to the opposite corner of the room. He followed her gaze to a flattened heap of clothing in said corner.

“That's where I sleep when I'm not on the road.” she said. “If you're tired, you should rest here. Where it's safe.”

“Oh, no, that's okay – I don't wanna take your bed.” Truthfully, he was afraid of going to sleep around her. But he was also afraid of being sleep-deprived around her. All his senses would be dulled and his reaction time would suffer.

“I sleep in the daytime.” She opened another box and started rummaging through it. “Rest now if you want to.”

Eddie rubbed one eye. It had been a long fucking day and a long fucking night. Resting did sound pretty good after everything he'd been through.

_Well, I guess the worst she can do is kill me._ Then at least all the bullshit of trying to stay alive would be over.

“Okay. I'll just rest a little while.”

He shrugged his jacket off and hung it beside Lilly's. Disgusting as it was, he decided to keep his white undershirt on. Lilly probably wouldn't appreciate him hanging around half-naked.

She studied him again as he sprawled himself out on the makeshift bed. He noticed her eyes drawn to the multitude of tattoos covering both his arms. She seemed embarrassed when he caught her staring. Quickly she averted her eyes, returning her attention to the supply boxes.

Girls always seemed to either love or hate his tattoos. Folding his arms behind his head, he cast a glance over at Lilly. She was very mysterious. It was hard to tell what she thought of him or his body modifications.

He waited for her to look over at him again. That time, when she did, he was ready. He decided to offer her a small smile. A gesture of goodwill between them, or so he hoped. With any luck it would help prevent her from coming to her senses and either throwing out or killing the strange man she'd invited into her safehouse.

His smile was met with an eye-roll as she looked away again.

“You got any ink?” He opted to broach the subject, rather than leave it hanging awkwardly between them. “You seem like the type.”

Lilly continued pulling items out of the boxes. She was currently sorting through his memento box – a small assortment of things that held no meaning or usefulness to anyone but him.

“I seem like the type?” was all she said in response.

“I dunno. Kinda.”

Her furious digging through the box slowed for a moment.

“I might,” she said.

Her response piqued his interest. “What do you have?”

“I'm not going to show you.” she replied, her voice muffled as she reached into the very bottom of the memento box. “But, it's a tiger. On my hip.”

“I knew it.” He chuckled to himself. “I can always tell.”

After a bit more digging, Lilly settled on something that seemed to catch her interest. She drew back from the half-empty box, holding a beat-up CD case.

Stifling another yawn, Eddie raised his head just enough to see what exactly she had. The plastic case caught the lantern light just right as she turned it over in her hand. The cover was made clearly visible in that brief moment. It was Incubus' _S.C.I.E.N.C.E._

One of his favorite albums of all time, and definitely his favorite for spicing up long car rides in the past. He'd thrown it into the box knowing he was going to be driving for quite a while to get out of Georgia. Of course, he never ended up actually listening to it during that car ride. Nor did he end up getting out of Georgia, for that matter.

“Great album.” he murmured, lowering his head back down onto the crook of his arm.

Lilly opened the case and glanced and the disc inside. “I used to like some Incubus.” she said. “I don't know this album, though.”

“It's their early stuff. Really weird, but really good. Or at least, I always thought so.”

She studied the back cover. “Idiot Box.” she mumbled, reading one of the song titles. “Sounds like where I am right now.”

“Aww, don't talk about yourself like that.” The witty comeback was out of his mouth before he could stop and remember who was talking to. This wasn't a friend of his. He immediately tensed.

“Oh yeah?” Lilly raised an eyebrow at him. “You feeling bold because I let you in here?”

“I'm sorry, I didn't think about it before I said it.” He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I'm – I'm still used to talking to my friend, I guess. I mean, he was the last person I used to talk to before you showed up. And he would probably think that was funny. I'm sorry.”

Donning her familiar scowl, Lilly dropped the CD back into the box.

“No point looking at that, anyway.” She folded the box flaps closed. “It's not like we can play music anymore.”

The next twenty minutes or so consisted of Lilly sifting through the remaining boxes while Eddie watched from her bed. It took all his effort to keep his eyes open. The makeshift bedding was scratchy and lumpy in places, but compared to a car seat it was luxurious. He was still frightened of his new companion – terrified, in all honesty – but sleep was a constant and persuasive whisper in his ear. He laid his cheek on the sleeve of a soft white sweater and finally closed his eyes. The last thing he took note of before passing out was Lilly staring over at him, her expression vague as always.

 


	5. Glass

The next time Eddie opened his eyes, he was alone. He turned onto his side and glanced about the room as best he could. The single lantern from last night had been shut off, leaving the room in pitch blackness. Clambering to his feet, he switched the light back on. All of his supplies were rooted through and tossed into piles beside each box. Lilly had obviously stayed a while after he'd fallen asleep. But now she was nowhere to be found.

Eddie rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and slipped his jacket back on. “Lilly?” he murmured, careful not to be too loud. “...You still here?”

Her jacket was still hanging on the rack in the corner, and her shoes were underneath it, same as last night. Would she have left without them? It seemed unlikely.

As the fog of sleep cleared from his brain, a realization dawned on him. The shelves blocking the door were still in place. She couldn’t have moved it back after leaving the room. Which meant she didn't use the door.

“Lilly?” he tried once more. Still she did not answer. _She must be hiding somewhere..._

He knelt down and peered under the metal shelves. Half-expecting Lilly to lunge at him like some sort of crazed bat-creature, he was surprised to find nothing but dust piles beneath the shelves. The same was true for the floor between the clothing racks and the walls – nothing but dust. “Where the hell...?”

His eyes fell upon the cleaned-out supply boxes. The largest one had its cardboard flaps pulled shut. _She wouldn't be...or maybe she would..._

He crept over to the box and reached slowly for its flaps. It was just big enough to _maybe_ fit a person, if they squeezed themselves into it.

He pulled the box's flaps back with a small yelp. Leaping back, expecting retaliation, he cowered for a moment before realizing the box contained nothing but his mementos and some old food wrappers.

He scratched his head. Where the hell _was_ she?

Since he was wide awake by that point anyway, Eddie decided to push the shelf aside and investigate the rest of the store. Lilly had said it was a clothing store. There probably wasn't much of use in there, but it was a good idea to learn the layout. And maybe he would find Lilly.

He dragged the heavy shelf to one side and opened the door as quietly as he could. The scent of musty clothing immediately assailed him. Nothing in the main store had been moved for months, it appeared. Unsurprising. This whole plaza was full of stores no one would risk their lives to loot. A nail salon, a pool supply store, and a barbershop. The only thing possibly worth looting was a tiny Chinese restaurant at the far end of the plaza, and all of its windows were already smashed.

He pulled his gaze away from the scene outside the front windows. This place's clothes looked expensive. Expensive and yuppie-ish. Not at all his style. He likely never would have set foot in a store like this pre-apocalypse.

Apparently it wasn't Lilly's style, either. Apart from the empty racks where she'd probably yanked off handfuls of clothes for her “bed”, nothing seemed touched.

He wandered through the abandoned store for a little while. Occasionally he stopped to pick up an item of interest. Winter hadn't fully set in yet, but it was well on its way. He never could have afforded these nice winter coats on his shitty paycheck before all this. But now...now he could just take them.

He picked up a black wool men's coat lined with soft gray satin. _I could be one of those people who owns a wool coat._ He never imagined he would. But the opportunity presented itself right before him.

Laying his leather jacket atop a rack nearby, he shrugged on the nice coat. It was so soft. Warm, too. _Huh...I kinda like it._ He decided to keep the coat on as he meandered through the store. This place apparently got its winter clothing in early – the outbreak had started in August, and yet they had a pretty sizable selection of cold-weather clothing. Fortunate for him, since an old leather jacket and a t-shirt wasn't really going to cut it in the colder months.

The kids' section, at the back end of the store, had a few backpacks in stock. _Those could be useful._ The biggest bags they had still looked a little silly and small on his broad, rather muscular back, but he wasn't picking it out to make a fashion statement. Backpacks were invaluable supply carriers. He ended up with a black and green one.

Toward the front registers sat a display table full of slippers, ranging from simple slip-ons to practically boots, and with varying degrees of decoration. He grabbed a pair of unadorned size 10 men's and tried them on. They were comfortable. Much better than walking across a tiled floor with bare feet. He decided to keep them.

His new finds in tow, Eddie resumed his search for Lilly. She couldn't have gone far, he reasoned. Of course that was complete BS, as he'd been asleep for hours and she easily could've taken off in the night. But none of the boarded-up windows or doors were disturbed in any way. The only door that wasn't sealed was the backdoor they had entered through. A peek between the wooden boards covering the nearest window showed him the RV was still there.

Unless she'd just disappeared into the woods with no vehicle, Lilly was still inside with him. _But where?_

“Lilly?” He wandered through the various departments, mustering the courage to call out her name a few times. His voice felt alien amidst the otherwise total silence. He had grown so accustomed to not speaking, to keeping constantly quiet. He wasn't shouting, but even a normal speaking volume increased his heart rate a bit. If there was anything this world had taught him, it was that things went better when he wasn't heard. Or seen. A prey animal mentality indeed.

He reached the unmarked backroom door, leading to the room he had slept in. She definitely wasn't in there. He'd checked it thoroughly.

A creaking sound startled him out of his investigation. Something above him hit the ceiling with a _thud_.

Eddie's already-quickened heartbeat increased to an adrenaline-fueled pounding. He drew back, away from the source of the noise above him. He recognized that sound. The sound of dead weight dragging itself around. Drawn by some unsuspecting moron talking at normal volume in an apocalypse.

O _h shit._ He hadn't even considered that walkers could be lurking in unexplored parts of the building. Had anyone ventured into the ceiling area to check?

The creaking of the ceiling tiles culminated in a heavy _thunk_ in the backroom. Something had fallen through. Eddie backed away from the door, immediately regretting the fact that in his half-asleep state he'd forgotten to grab a weapon before exploring the store. He had no way to defend himself. He was alone and vulnerable yet again. _I'm so stupid..._

Awaiting the signature clawing and growling from behind the closed door, Eddie grabbed the nearest useful thing he could find, a metal hanger. He quickly unbent it to form something vaguely capable of stabbing, and then positioned himself to open the door.

He needed those supplies inside. No way was he going to just abandon everything in that room. He was going to have to kill that thing.

 _Wish I knew where Lilly was..._ She was surely adept at handling walkers. Where the hell was she?

His makeshift weapon at the ready, Eddie quietly turned the doorknob and opened the door as carefully as he could. Sunlight spilling into the dark room beyond, Lilly answered his question by greeting him on the other side of the door. With a knife.

“Whoa!” Eddie jumped back, hands in the air. The hanger fell to the floor at his feet.

From the look on Lilly's face she was startled as well. “I thought you took off.” she said.

“I thought _you_ did!” He caught his breath, still startled from the sight of someone coming at him with a knife like that. “Where did you go??”

“I told you I sleep in the daytime.” She slipped the knife into her back pocket, maintaining eye contact the entire time. “I...expected you would leave while I was asleep. That's why I took all the good stuff out of your boxes and brought it upstairs with me.”

“Why would I leave?” After the soul-crushing loneliness of the past few months, why would he give up the only human contact he had? “And what do you mean 'upstairs'? I didn't know there _was_ an upstairs here.”

“Why _wouldn't_ you leave?” Lilly uttered in her typical low-but-commanding tone of voice. “You can't trust me. You don't know if I'm dangerous.” She took a step back inside the room and glanced up at the ceiling. “And yes, there is an upstairs. It's where I was sleeping until you started pushing shelves and wandering around.”

With that knowledge, looking at Lilly he could kind of tell she'd been sleeping. Her hair was tousled, and her eyes held that glassy look of someone who had just woken up. They leveled Eddie with a glare that said Lilly wasn't too pleased to have been disturbed.

“I'm sorry I woke you up,” he said, his apology genuine. She appeared sleep-deprived enough already. He felt bad adding to it.

The apology seemed to take her by surprise. “I...how long are you planning on staying?” Her tone changed midsentence. What began as a gentle reply shifted to a question, barked more like an order.

Eddie paused. “How long do you want me here?”

Lilly rubbed one eye. “Ideally? I guess as long as you can be useful.”

Useful. Was he useful? Could he truly, in any way, aid someone who seemed built for an apocalypse? He had no real skills or abilities. All he ever did was run and hide – though Lilly did seem to consider those things survival skills.

As the morning sun shone through the exposed window glass around them, bathing Lilly in a glow that revealed every detail of her tired, weathered face, Eddie had an idea. “If you sleep during the day then you're vulnerable to anyone who might try to loot this place in the daytime. I can guard it while you sleep.”

“So are you planning on staying long-term?” was all she said in response.

He considered how to answer her. Ultimately he decided to go with blunt honesty, one type of conversation tool he was truly good at.

“Honestly,” he began, “I've been alone for so long. It felt like forever. You're the first person since Wy- since the guy I was surviving with, that I've been able to talk to and, like, reason with. Even when I was with my friend, the only people we ever came across were psychos in the woods. You can't really find too many good people anymore.” He swallowed, working up the guts to say the final bit that came to his mind. “So when I find a good person, I kinda want to stick with them, y'know? I want to be around them.”

As he'd anticipated, the honest outpouring caught Lilly off-guard. Her dark, intimidating eyes searched his, unsure what to make of his words. He maintained a neutral look – not too emotional or too emotionless. The look of someone who was nervously exposing his heart to a near-stranger.

“You don't know that I'm a good person.” Lilly murmured, still searching his face uncertainly.

“I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.” He smiled a little. An attempt to break some of the tension between them.

Lilly nodded, more to herself than to him. “I guess that's all you can give a stranger in this world.”

A brief silence settled between them. Eddie wasn't sure what to say next – but it seemed he didn't need to say anything. Lilly spoke up before he could broach any other subject.

“You know, I don't really like us being on opposite sleeping schedules – especially if we plan on surviving together long-term. We're in a perpetual state of vulnerability if we're both always guarding each other. We won't get anything done that way.” She chewed her lip pensively. “At least if we sleep at the same time we can just hole up somewhere and barricade ourselves in. Then during the daytime, when most of our biggest potential threats are awake, we'd be at our strongest.”

Eddie could only agree with that. Walkers roamed day and night, but there were far more survivors awake in the daytime, out looting and pillaging. And there were more dangerous animals out at night, when the two of them could be tucked safely away in their hideout.

“A nocturnal schedule works when you're alone,” she added. “It worked for me. But now that there are two of us...unless you plan on joining me on a night schedule...”

“I coulddo that.” He shrugged. “It'd take a little getting used to, but...”

Lilly blinked the glaze of tiredness from her eyes. “No, forget it. We should be up in the daytime. I'll stay awake until nightfall. Then we can sleep somewhere safe.”

“You mean, like, this room?” It seemed pretty safe to him.

“If we make it back here by dark.”

He raised an eyebrow. “We're going somewhere?”

Lilly nodded. “I need to make a supply run. There's a department store on the other side of town. I hit it about once a week for things I can't get anywhere else.”

“It still has stuff?” He'd assumed most stores had been completely cleaned out by now.

“It has what I need.” She headed over to the rack where her leather jacket hung. Slinging it on, she then reached down for her boots. “We need to do a few things around here first, but then we should head out. The earlier, the better.”

Eddie decided to keep his new coat on. It was really comfortable. Lilly hadn't even commented on his newly-acquired accessories. She must have expected he would take some things from the storefront.

He grabbed his shoes, right beside Lilly's, and pulled them on, leaving his new slippers in their place. As he was lacing them up he thought to ask her something.

“What exactly do you need, by the way? For supplies? I might have whatever it is. I've got a lot of stuff.”

She lifted her eyes to him, a flat stare answering his words. “You don't have what I need.”

He was going to persist, but then he remembered that she had sorted through all his boxes. She definitely knew whether or not he had whatever she needed.

“Oh. Okay. Well, I'll go with you, then.”

“I moved most of the important stuff upstairs.” Lilly grunted, grabbing a backpack from the corner of the room. “No one should find it there, even on the off-chance somebody decided to break into the store and then discovered this room.”

“Where _is_ upstairs, anyway?” Eddie scooped up his new backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “I mean, like, how do you get to it? What kind of area is it?”

“Don't worry about it.” She headed for the door. “Shut the door behind you.”

Eddie closed it quietly. Lilly paused and then glanced back at it. Leaning back toward the door, she dragged a full rack of clothing in front of it. The door was easy to miss before. With the clothing there it was almost invisible.

“All right, we'll do the couple of things that need to be done here, then we'll head out.” Lilly's backpack jostled with every brisk step she took. She had some stuff in there. Eddie wondered what it was.

As if she'd read his mind, Lilly shifted the bag to one shoulder, unzipped it partway and then pulled something out. A notebook.

“I've got a list of the things this place needs done.” She fished a pen out of the backpack's smaller front pocket. “If we can knock off a few of them before we leave, that'll be a big relief and a little less to worry about later on.”

The first several pages of the notebook that Lilly flipped past were filled with writing. It didn't look like lists or a schedule of any sort. It was broken into paragraphs, not bullet points.

Curious as he was, Eddie didn't dare ask.

“All right,” He leaned in to scan the list alongside Lilly. “Let's get to work, then.”

 

 


	6. Magic Medicine

There were several large, heavy objects – shelving units, full boxes, hunks of rubble – in the store that Lilly could not move by herself. Eddie helped her with them. She was strong – he barely even had to break a sweat helping her lift – but many of the objects, like the bulkier clothing racks, were cumbersome and difficult to move by one's self. Lilly wanted to block off as many entrances to the store as possible. She had planned to use the bigger objects as doorway blockers before she realized she couldn't get a good hold on them with just two hands.

“Do you think this place will hold long?” Eddie asked as they pushed a long rack of sweaters up against a fire exit.

Lilly jammed the rack under the emergency door handle, sticking it shut. “Probably not.”

“No?”

“The only reason we're safe in here now is because no one knows we're here.” She tested the rack, made sure it was firmly wedged under the door's push bar. “The second someone finds out about us, finds out we've got supplies and food stored here, they'll attack and we'll lose this place either to them or walkers.”

She spoke with a somber conviction. Eddie got the feeling something like the situation she was describing had happened to her already. “What's the plan when that happens?” he asked quietly.

“We take off in the RV and drive until we find somewhere new.”

They grabbed hold of another rack, this one stocked with women's jeans. The weight of the denim would make for a decent barrier, Lilly reasoned. As they pushed it up against a poorly-boarded window, Eddie tried to think of something else to say. Something unrelated, since Lilly seemed closed-off about the current topic. He just hated silence.

He thought of something as they were securing the second rack in place. Cracking a bit of a nervous smile, he asked, “So do you ever just...put some of these expensive clothes on, just 'cause you can?”

He assumed the attempt at humor wouldn't go over well with Lilly. But, to his surprise, she actually smiled a little. A _very_ little, so subtle that you could almost think you were mistaken thinking it was a smile at all. But on a woman who almost constantly appeared to be scowling, it was a noticeable shift.

“Actually, I have.” She shrugged, letting that tiny smile hover on her lips for the briefest of moments before squelching it with her usual look of apathy. “Not much else to do when you're shut in here by yourself.”

He decided to push his luck. “Dresses and lace, I'm assuming?”

She made a small sound. He glanced over at her and realized it must have been a laugh. Or at least a snicker. She was smiling again, and her right hand hovered close to her mouth, as if she were ready to conceal any more escaped laughter.

“More along the lines of coats and sweaters.” she finally replied. “And some tank tops they had on clearance. Basically anything practical.”

“Makes sense.” Of course she still held a survivalist mindset even when she was just bored and screwing around. He should have guessed.

She led him to another window area with cracked glass. “It's annoying, though, because nothing's long enough for me. I usually end up sticking with the clothes I already had on me when I got here.” Her gaze flicked down to her filthy outfit. “I don't wear this every day, but I wear it a lot.”

“Yeah, you're really tall.” He tried not to follow her gaze as she studied herself. No sense being caught staring. “I mean, it suits you. But I haven't met too many girls your height before.”

Lilly locked on to a potential window-blocker – a standalone counter with a cabinet full of plastic bags below it and an abandoned cash register gathering dust atop it. It was just tall enough to block the weakened part of the glass. “There, let's use that.” She nodded toward it. Eddie joined her as she found a good grip on the bulky piece of furniture. The two of them began pushing it across the tiled floor.

“You know, I had to have this jacket custom-made.” Lilly spoke up as the counter scratched its way over the once-smooth tiled floor. “I wanted it a little long on a 5'10 frame, but fitted for a woman.”

Surprised by her volunteered attempt at conversation, Eddie turned his focus more to her than the counter. “That couldn't have been cheap.” His own leather jacket was a pickup from a secondhand store, and even that had cost him a pretty penny.

“It cost me a little over $600. Or, it would have, but my father insisted on paying half of it for me as a birthday present.” She rolled her eyes, obviously reliving some unspoken memory. “It's served me for years, though. When all this was just starting I made my dad and – and this other guy we were surviving with go back to my house with me and get it. The place was ransacked...but they hadn't touched the jacket. Probably because it wouldn't fit too many people other than me.” She made that little sound again, something like a laugh.

Her father and another man. Members of the former group she had yet to talk about. Though his curiosity was piqued, Eddie didn't dare push the subject. “Got a hell of a backstory, sounds like.”

“Yeah.”

They carefully pushed the heavy counter until it butted up against the window. Eddie made sure it was secure. He crouched down and carefully touched the cracked glass. It was holding up okay, and the reinforcement would certainly help. He gave Lilly a thumbs-up while still crouched.

Lilly checked something off on her list. “Okay, that's good for now. Next thing is checking for mice and ants. The last thing we want is to come back to our food torn open and chewed into, or infested with bugs. They're good at hiding, but it doesn't hurt to check for them anyway.”

She suggested that they split up for that part, in the interest of time. The store was not very large and the clothing racks were not high, so they could see each other the entire time. Lilly refused to look at Eddie for the most part. She was extremely focused, searching every crack and corner for potential pests. Eddie tried to match her level of focus, staring down at the ground as he wandered from one end of the store to the other.

As he examined the area, his thoughts drifted. His mind attempted for the millionth time to bring him back to the worst night of his life. Though he tried to distract himself, the memories presented themselves boldly in front of him. That night...the tromp of footsteps through the woods...the crack of a gunshot...the splatter of warm blood on his face, throat, and chest as he stood, shaking, still holding the gun out...

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. _No, don't think about it._ It was an accident. He would never kill somebody on purpose.

Nevertheless, regardless of whether he intended to or not, he killed a man that night. That man was dead now, and whether or not it was an accident did nothing to change that fact. Eddie was a murderer.

What would Lilly think if she knew that? How would she feel knowing that the stranger she took a chance on saving had murdered someone not all that long before?

This was one of the reasons he hated silence. It always led back to this.

He knelt down to examine a small hole in the wall. Lilly wasn't stupid. In fact, from what he'd witnessed of her she was incredibly intelligent and clever. She must have known the kind of risk she was taking bringing a stranger on board her vehicle when she was all alone. The way the world was now, anyone could have a dark secret. Or many dark secrets. She must have planned for the worst when deciding to let him join her. Maybe she didn't fear people with terrible secrets.

Maybe she had terrible secrets of her own.

The hole he examined was shallow, just a nick in the drywall really. It didn't seem big enough for anything to be living in or traveling through. He rose back up and continued walking.

_I'm gonna have to tell her the truth at some point._ That looming fact terrified him. He couldn't go on never mentioning it. But what if she felt she couldn't trust him afterward? What if she threw him out and he had to go back to being on his own again? What if-

“Son of a bitch!”

Lilly hopped up from wherever she'd been crouching, clutching Eddie's makeshift hanger weapon from earlier. She charged after some invisible thing, across the back of the store, wielding the straightened metal rod like a spear.

A few seconds later a gray blur raced across the tiled floor. It was charging away from Lilly at top speed. It passed right by him, squeaking frantically as it dove for the hole he had just examined.

“Get that thing!” Lilly cried. Still a bit confused by the sudden change of pace, Eddie scrambled for something to block up the hole.

By the time he found something it was far too late. The mouse squeezed itself into the hole and disappeared.

Lilly appeared at his side, catching her breath. “Damn it, I _knew_ this place had mice. I heard scratching in the walls last night.” She growled at the hole in the wall. “Fucking Christ.”

Eddie plugged the hole up with a roll of receipt paper he'd found on the register. “It'll chew its way right through that.” Lilly sighed. “We'll need to find a better way to store our food than in cardboard boxes. They'll chew through those, too.”

“Maybe we can find some of those plastic storage bins.” Eddie suggested. “The ones with the covers that snap on?”

Lilly nodded. “Yeah, that's a good idea.” She flipped a page in her notebook and scribbled it down at the bottom of a list. “I doubt too many of those have been looted. We can toss a few in the back of the RV.”

Wow, she actually liked his idea. Eddie felt pretty impressed with himself.

“We should go now.” Lilly put the notebook away. “The sooner we can get the supplies, especially the boxes so the mice don't eat our food, the better. Are you ready?”

“Um, yeah.” It wasn't like he had anything better to do.

They sneaked out the back door in silence. Lilly dragged a nearby trash can, filled to the brim with rotting garbage, in front of it. Then she pulled a folded-up piece of paper from her jacket pocket and set it on top of the doorknob.

“What's that?” Eddie whispered, nodding to the paper.

“It says 'Don't open, walkers inside'.” She headed for the RV.

Eddie followed her. “Do you think that would stop someone from going in there?”

“I don't have the keys to the place, so it's the best defense we've got.”

Lilly climbed up into the RV and started the engine. Eddie was right behind her, taking up his familiar post in the passenger seat next to her. She glanced about, checking if anyone was around to see them leave. Seemingly satisfied with what she saw, or didn't see, Lilly shifted the RV into reverse and carefully backed out of the rear parking lot.

“Is it weird that I'm kind of excited for this?” Eddie asked as he set his backpack down by his feet.

Lilly shifted into drive and quietly pulled out onto the street. “You're excited to go risk your life looting a store?”

“Kind of, yeah.” He grinned sheepishly. “It's just been so long since I've done anything other than drive around aimlessly. It's kinda nice to have a place to stay, and a goal, and...”

His trailing off prompted her to glance over at him.

“...It's nice to not be alone.” he quietly finished.

Lilly maneuvered the RV between the abandoned vehicles littering the street. She didn't look at him, but he saw her expression change slightly at his words.

“I agree.” she eventually said.

He laughed a little. “Us prey animals gotta stick together, right?”

“I still want humankind to succeed.” Lilly's tone was surprisingly sharp – not sharp with anger, but with conviction. Determination. “Killing everyone I met wouldn't help that.”

Eddie glanced out the window, taking in the sight of all the wreckage around them. The remains of human civilization. “Do you think we _will_ succeed?”

The RV bumped over some rubble. Car parts and metal scraps. Something stirred underneath the mechanical mess, but they were gone before it could reveal itself.

“I don't know.” Lilly said.

 

 


	7. A Certain Shade of Green

The department store Lilly mentioned turned out to be Save Lots, a crappy, run-down chain store that sold low-end merchandise at low prices. The place was totally wrecked. Looters had smashed practically every window and empty cardboard boxes littered the parking lot.

Lilly swung around back and parked out of sight of the road. “This is dangerous territory.” she warned before they got out of the RV. “A lot of other survivors pass through here.”

Eddie slung his backpack over his shoulder once again. “I'm assuming they aren't friendly?”

“It depends on who you come across.” They paused inside the vehicle as Lilly elaborated a bit. “Some of these people will leave you alone as long as you do the same. I've even met a couple who'll trade things or services for supplies.”

“What kind of services?” The first things he thought of were services like fixing or installing stuff. Repair service. It took him a minute to realize she may have been talking about something very different.

“Whatever you want.” Lilly shrugged. “It's mostly luxury things you don't need but that they want to tempt you with. Someone here tried to persuade me to trade three full cans of food for a chocolate bar a couple weeks ago.”

“I'm assuming you said no.”

“Of course. But they'll manage to find some idiot to prey on. Someone impulsive, who doesn't think ahead.”

She pushed open the door and they stepped down out of the RV. Lilly quietly locked it behind them. They crept along the graffiti'd back wall of the store. “Are there always other people here?” Eddie whispered. Lilly shook her head, then laid a finger on her lips.

On the far side of the parking lot two walkers knelt over a fresh body. They tore into it with their rotten nails and grabbed at the poor victim's innards, chewing on them like starved dogs. Eddie followed Lilly's gaze over to the gory scene. Her mouth was tugged into an undeniable frown. This was something you never simply got used to.

“They're distracted,” she said, without letting a hint of emotion seep into her voice. “We can sneak in quietly.”

The automatic doors in front of the store hung wide open, long since pulled off their tracks. Lilly peered into the store before stepping in. She clutched a rather small handgun that she'd pulled out of her backpack. After surveying the interior of the store for a long few moments, she gestured to Eddie that they should head inside.

Eddie glanced back at the walkers in the parking lot one last time. The body they were eating was fresh. That person had been a survivor.

He thought again of how Lilly's mercy had saved him from a similarly-grisly fate. His eyes fell upon her as she waited for him to join her inside, and he found himself smiling the tiniest bit.

He could practically hear Wyatt chastising him in his head. He'd always had terrible taste in women.

They paused just inside the store, back to back, getting a better look around. It was still very early morning, so many survivors were probably either still asleep or just waking up. They had the place to themselves, it seemed, for the moment.

Pressed up against one another like they were, Eddie could feel Lilly's quick, shallow breaths as her shoulders rose and fell with them. Was she scared? This place didn't seem any worse than out in the woods, or in a parking lot fifty feet from a pack of hungry walkers. Of course, there was no real threat of running into living people in either of those places. Maybe this place, rife with survivors, held a different kind of danger.

Lilly nodded to an aisle full of debris and smashed ceiling lights. “I'll be over there. You stand guard, or something.” She handed him the gun and pulled out a knife.

“Wait, shouldn't I go with you?”

“No.”

“...Okay.” He held back, resigning instead to look around and keep watch. Lilly disappeared down the wrecked aisle. He heard rummaging moments later.

Eddie shifted his weight back and forth, keeping an eye on the rest of the store. It really did seem to be empty. He thought about what Lilly had said outside, that there were often other survivors coming and going in and out of the store. Hopefully they wouldn't run into anyone. It would just make things more difficult.

But if they did stick around long enough, maybe they'd come across...

He shook his head. No sense getting his hopes up. He was probably dead. And even if he wasn't, Eddie had abandoned him, left him with no supplies and no car. Who would want to reunite with a shitty friend like that?

Something fell from the shelf Lilly was looting, making a noticeable noise in the empty store. Lilly swore under her breath.

Most of the aisles were ransacked. The crucial items – food, medical supplies, bottled water – were all gone. Unsurprising.

The only sections he could see that seemed untouched were the electronic and toy sections. Again, he thought, unsurprising. It felt like a hundred years ago that he was spitting on his copy of Driver 2, cleaning grime off the disc so he could drive around the virtual cities trying to glitch the old game out. He'd spend fifteen minutes trying to screw the game up, then twenty minutes laughing as his car fell through a bridge and flipped continuously through an infinite void of nothingness.

He missed video games.

While Lilly hunted for whatever she needed, Eddie decided to take a walk over to that section. “Hey, I'll be right back.” he whispered to her.

“Where are you going?” She darted out of the aisle. Her backpack was unzipped and half-stuffed with little pink boxes. He suddenly realized why she hadn't wanted him there.

“Oh, I don't – I was just, uh, gonna look around.”

“Why don't you wait for me?” She tossed another box into her bag and then zipped it up. “I got all that was left here anyway.”

“It's not important, I was just gonna...” He glanced around once more. “Well, is there anything good left around here?”

“Not much.” She slipped her bag back on and returned to his side. “What are you looking for?”

He noticed her tone held a note of suspicion. She didn't trust his motives, or him for that matter. He'd feel stupid admitting what he was thinking about, but denying it would only make him more suspicious in her eyes.

“I was just gonna maybe take a walk through the video game section. For old times' sake.” He shrugged and averted his eyes.

The glare of distrust in Lilly's eyes softened a bit. Nobody would make up something that stupid, and they both knew it.

“It's dangerous to stay here.” Her usually-commanding voice was tempered, her words spoken more like advice than an order for once. “And trust me, it's not worth reliving the past by doing stuff like that. It just makes you feel worse in the end.”

She brushed past him before he could respond. Her eyes scanned the wreckage of the store. “There's this...scumbag who likes to hang around here when there's no one else. I don't like being here when it's deserted.”

That explained her nervous breathing, and her request for Eddie to stay nearby. “What is he, a bandit or something?”

Lilly adjusted the backpack straps on her shoulders and looked around again. “I don't know. He's just...disgusting. I'd rather not run into him if we can help it.”

Eddie stuck close to her after that. He wasn't much the alpha male type, but he could probably take a guy if he had to. Especially some creepy loser hanging around the Save Lots.

“Now we need to find some of those plastic boxes if they have them.” Lilly picked her way over the rubble of the ruined store. “If we find some, we can bring the RV around the side of the store and carry them out the emergency exit. It'll be too dangerous to have our hands full like that and have to venture across the parking lot.”

Far from the front windows, the only source of light, the back of the store was extremely dark. Eddie squinted to read the aisle signs. One of them looked like it said “Storage”. “They might be down here.” He nudged Lilly and nodded down the dark, looming aisle. “I think the sign says Storage.”

They investigated the section. Sure enough, there were a bunch of plastic storage tubs sitting on the shelves, a stack of covers tucked in beside them. “Great.” Lilly grabbed a medium-sized clear one and nodded to a large red box. “Get that big one there. These two should be enough, and we'll only have to make one trip to the RV.”

Eddie laid a proper-sized cover sideways inside the box and then scooped it up. They carried their loot over to the darkest side of the building, where the strong sun outside outlined a windowless door.

Lilly set her box down right by the door. “Put yours down here. We'll go get the RV, bring it right to the door, then we'll grab these and go.”

Eddie set his box down. As an afterthought, he placed Lilly's smaller box inside his. “That way one of us can carry it and one of us can stay in the car.” he murmured. She nodded approvingly at his idea.

Lilly pushed open the side emergency door and motioned for Eddie to follow. The heavy door swung shut behind him as he walked out, but he caught it before it could slam.

“Don't let that close.” Lilly hissed.

Looking the door over, Eddie realized why they hadn't come in that way. There was no way to open it from the outside. He grabbed a chunk of broken brick off the ground and stuck it in the doorway. The door remained jarred open by the obstruction.

Lilly and Eddie sneaked toward the back of the building. The RV was just around the corner.

“Ugh.” Lilly suddenly made a face.

“What?”

“He's here.”

She ducked low and crept behind a dumpster. Eddie, unsure what else to do, followed suit. “That creep I told you about. That's his truck over there.”

Eddie peered around the dumpster. His eyes bulged at the sight of the powder blue pickup truck parked on the side of the building. _Oh shit._

“I would really rather avoid a confrontation with this guy.” Lilly whispered. “He's all talk, and I'm sure he wouldn't try anything with two of us here, but still...”

Eddie remained frozen in place. _That truck._

“Come on,” Lilly grabbed a fistful of Eddie's sleeve and pulled on it. “I don't see him. He might already be inside. We can make a break for it if we move quickly and quietly.”

One headlight was shot out. It was the same truck.

“Okay, we gotta – we gotta not let that guy see me.” Eddie remained crouched, trying to keep his tone neutral. “...'Cause if he sees me...”

Lilly stood up.

“Wait, Lilly-” Eddie tried to pull her back. Then he realized why she was standing.

The man in the blue trucker cap approached Lilly with a boldness Eddie could never dream of mustering. He grinned, sizing her up with a predatory once-over. “Funny runnin' into you here, sweetie.”

“Leave me alone.” Her voice was falsely calm. She held her ground despite his proximity. He was only slightly taller than her, so he didn't have much to intimidate her with.

Cursing himself for being such a coward, Eddie pressed himself against the side of the dumpster and tried to silence his panting. _This fucking guy..._

Lilly didn't think he was dangerous. She obviously didn't know him very well.

“Aw, come on. Don't be like that.” He laughed an ugly laugh. “You know, these days people have to stick together. Men and women, especially. We gotta think about continuing the species.”

Lilly appeared unfazed. “You won't be able to continue the species if I cut your balls off. Now move. I'm leaving.”

He closed the gap between them. “You ain't gonna find too many men out here willing to put up with your attitude.” He pushed his face closer to hers, wearing a twisted smile. “Lucky I don't mind. I like 'em a little feisty. I'd put as many babies in you as I could.”

“You're not intimidating me.” Lilly reached for the knife in her back pocket. “This is your last warning. Leave.”

The man sneered. “I'm not tryin' to intimidate you. I'm just makin' you an _offer_. That's all.”

“And _I'm_ making _you_ an offer.” She drew the knife on him. “Fuck off and I won't kill you. Today, anyway.”

“You're breaking my heart, sweetie.” The man sniffled, but still did not step out of her personal space. “There ain't many women left. What am I s'posed to do out here?”

“Go fuck a walker.”

The man laughed.

“I'm not joking.” Lilly's delivery remained flat and unemotional. “You want to get laid so badly? Try your luck with one of them.”

The man stepped back and leaned against the dumpster, still laughing. “You know, if they weren't so eager to bite my dick off I'd probably give it a shot. They can't say nothin', can't complain...and they _are_ still women...be a fun challenge, anyway...”

He shifted his weight against the dumpster. The wheels squeaked and pushed the metal box backward, right into Eddie. Crouched as he was, the impact knocked him to the pavement with a grunt.

Eddie looked up from his faceplant on the cement to find the man's eyes locked solely on to him. In a flash the man's expression shifted, his cocky grin melting into a snarl.

Lilly's eyes flicked between the two men. She clutched Eddie's knife with whitened knuckles.

Eddie picked himself up as best he could and began backing away from the man. “Dude, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry, I didn't-”

The man lunged at him. Eddie was off and running without a second thought.

Eddie rounded the corner, practically tripping over himself as he went. He made it most of the way across the front of the store before he realized the man didn't seem to be pursuing him.

The two walkers, finished eating, turned their rotted faces his way. They rose up and began to stagger toward him. Eddie made a snap decision to backtrack. The fact that the guy wasn't chasing him had Eddie worried. Especially with Lilly there...

He drew his gun and hurried back around the corner. _I'm not gonna let him hurt her because of me. No way._

As soon as he rounded the corner he stopped in surprise. The man was flat on the ground. Lilly was sitting on his back, her knees pinning down both of his arms. Her knife hovered just below the flesh of his exposed throat.

“You fucking piece'a shit!” The man squirmed under Lilly, but his venom were directed at Eddie. “I'll fucking kill you!”

Lilly pushed his face down into the pavement, keeping the knife close. “Eddie,” she said, still maintaining the false calmness to her voice, “How do you know this guy?”

Eddie looked at the man with wide, terrified eyes. He remembered all that transpired that night. The way the man had looked at him as Eddie lowered his gun in the forest. The same wordless attack the man had launched on him back then, as Eddie cried out how sorry he was and that it was an accident.

He'd never meant to take someone's life that night.

Eddie shook his head, trying to clear away the memories. That man's blood still stained his clothes. He couldn't forget the cold, slick feeling of having bloody clothing stuck to his skin. He'd never felt so horrible.

Then he left Wyatt in the hands of this guy...

“Eddie?” Lilly's expression changed as she stared at him. “What did you-”

The man bucked suddenly, knocking Lilly off his back. In a second he was on top of her, wrenching the knife from her hand.

“Get the fuck off me!” Lilly kneed him in the chest and pulled herself out from under him. Her attempt to get away was thwarted when the man tangled his fingers into her long hair and used it to reel her back in. He held her knife, her only accessible weapon. Strong as she was, brute force was little help against someone with a razor-sharp blade.

Eddie tried to quell his shaking enough to aim a good shot at the man. He and Lilly were thrashing about, making it difficult to lock a shot on to just him.

Behind him Eddie began to hear snarling. The walkers from the parking lot, now joined by others from the street and beyond, were stumbling their way over to the survivors. Drawn by all the shouting.

Eddie acted on impulse and shot the walker nearest him. It went down, but was soon replaced by several others.

The noise startled Lilly. She glanced away from the man she was struggling against just long enough to see what Eddie had shot.

That one second was all the man needed. He slashed at her with the knife, driving it straight for her left eye. She threw her arm up to defend her face, but all she managed to do was redirect the blade. Instead of driving straight down into her socket, the tip of it sliced the surface of her eyeball. It continued in a line down her face, tearing the skin of her cheek open in a fountain of blood.

Lilly fell back and started screaming. Her hands clutched instinctively at her wounded face. Blood welled from between her fingers as she collapsed to the ground, her body wracked with screams of agony.

Using the moment of separation to his advantage, Eddie got a clear shot at the man. His shaking hands, combined with the man's wild and unpredictable movements, resulted in a shot to the shoulder. The man cried out in pain before staggering to his feet and charging at Eddie.

Walkers swarmed all around them. Eddie was forced to shoot a few that got too close to him, preventing him from scoring another good shot on the other man.

Luckily the wild-eyed man didn't seem too keen on fighting with all the walkers around. He attempted to swing at Eddie, but quickly realized they were becoming boxed in by the dead. His gaze swept across the oncoming swarm of dead. Nursing his bleeding shoulder, he retreated back toward his truck. A walker blocked his path, but was quickly dispatched by the man. He jabbed Eddie's knife, stolen from Lilly, deep into its skull and then jumped in his truck.

The noise of the vehicle as the man sped off distracted some walkers, but not enough of them. A swarm still closed in on Eddie, and a few of them had noticed Lilly lying on the ground.

“Okay, we gotta...we gotta go...” Eddie hustled over to where Lilly lay, motionless, on the pavement. She moaned in pain. Her hands covered her eyes, but he could see blood trickling down the left side of her face.

“Come on.” It killed him, but he knew he had to be tough if they were going to get out of there alive. “I know he hurt you, but we just – we _have_ to go.” He attempted to pull her up. She screamed and writhed out of his grasp.

It was clear Lilly wasn't perceiving what was happening around her. Her entire body was in panic mode due to her injury.

The walkers were only a few yards away from the two of them. Another thirty seconds of pleading with her and they'd be walker food.

“I'm sorry, I don't want to do this.” He slipped one arm under Lilly's back and one just behind her knees. With all the care he could manage in a rush, he picked her up and carried her over to the RV.

“Oh my God...” Lilly murmured over and over, her face still covered. “Oh my God. My eye. I can't – I can't fucking see.” Her voice trembled. “I can't fucking see.”

Eddie plucked the keys from the gaping pocket of her jacket and unlocked the door of the RV. He carried Lilly up its steps and then kicked the door shut behind them. Moments later he heard a walker's fists pounding on the side of the vehicle.

He rested Lilly on the bench seat toward the rear of the RV. Her hands fell limply from her face. He noticed her eyes were closed. She wasn't moving, but she was still breathing. She was alive, at least.

People could black out from pain alone. The few med classes he'd taken during his short time at college hadn't left him with much lasting information, but that was one thing he remembered learning.

The left half of her face was covered in blood and a clear-ish fluid, all streams connected to her closed left eye. He didn't dare touch or examine the eye itself.

_Shit. Fuck._ That wasn't supposed to happen. That guy, Eddie never dreamed he'd still be alive...that he'd still be hanging around this area... _Fuck..._

The walkers pounding on the RV were relentless, just as they'd been when he was trapped in his dead car. He knew he had to go. But what was he to do with Lilly? He couldn't leave her lying back there – she'd crash to the floor if he had to make a quick stop or a rough turn. The best option, he decided, was to buckle her into the passenger seat and lean her against the window. That way she wouldn't get any more hurt, and he could watch her to make sure she didn't start reacting any worse to the severe injury.

He scooped Lilly back up and carried her to the front of the RV. She was out cold. Gingerly as he could manage, he set her into the passenger seat and rested her against the window. Then he buckled her in, trying to make sure she didn't fall out of the seat.

“Okay,” he mumbled to himself as he sat down in the driver's seat. “Okay. This is fine.” He'd never driven such a large vehicle before. It would've been nice to get some pointers, were his only companion not unconscious.

“All right. Here we go.” He turned the key in the ignition. The RV groaned to life. “Gotta just...get us back to the plaza. Get you into the backroom where you'll be safe. No big deal. It'll be easy.”

Walkers were beating on every inch of the RV's exterior. Eddie slowly backed the vehicle up, knocking a few of them down. The rest followed him as he reversed. Then he floored it forward. The monstrous vehicle tore through the swarm of walkers before it, bumping right over a few of them on the way out.

The front right tire screeched and the RV slid a bit as one of the dead got chewed up and stuck in the tire. Eddie pushed harder on the gas. The tires spun until the walker remnants flew out and the RV could move freely again.

Not wasting another moment, Eddie sped off down the road, as fast as he could go in a decades-old camping vehicle he'd never operated before.


	8. Favorite Things

“We made it.” Eddie breathed a sigh of relief as he navigated the cluttered road before him. There were still walkers pursuing him, but they were hindered by the rubble in the road. Several stumbled and tripped over car parts and fallen street signs. Eddie flew right over them. “I knew we'd make it.”

He stole a glance over at Lilly. Her right cheek was pressed against the window, and her whole body was slumped like a ragdoll. It occurred to him that he couldn't even be sure she'd survive this attack. In this world a simple infection could take you out. And that blade wasn't clean.

Navigating through the littered streets in an unfamiliar vehicle proved more difficult than he'd anticipated. More than once he heard the side of the RV scrape up against something. _Oops_.

When he pulled into the plaza's parking lot, a few more wandering walkers were eager to greet him. They staggered after the RV as he swung around to the back of the lot.

“Okay. Okay.” He kept repeating that word to himself. He hopped up out of the driver's seat, unbuckled Lilly, scooped her back up yet again, and then kicked the RV door open. He ran in the back door and then pulled it shut behind them with his foot.

Carefully, he laid Lilly down on the pile of clothing in the backroom. He then began a furious dig through his boxes, seeking the peroxide he knew he had in there. That wound needed to be cleaned.

Lilly groaned from her bedding. Eddie froze, terrified of what that groan could mean. She _had_ been breathing, right?

“Oh...oh my God...”

Her murmur sent a wave of relief through him. He was pretty sure walkers didn't cry out to God when they were in pain.

His relief was short-lived. “Fucking Christ!” Lilly grabbed at her face and moaned. “What happened?! Why am I – ugh, Jesus! What the fuck!”

“Um, hey Lilly.” He moved to kneel beside her. Lilly uncovered her face and glanced up at him. He got a good look at her wounded eye. It had a milky, glassy look to it, and it was still leaking clear fluid. Blood oozed from a linear slice above and below her eye. The blade had slashed deep.

“W-what happened...where's that guy...?” She pawed at her face. “What's covering my eye?”

Eddie leaned in closer, still examining the garish wound. “There's nothing covering your eye. But it did get...injured...”

Lilly froze. “There's – there's nothing covering my left eye?”

“No. I was looking for some peroxide to help the wound around it. It's pretty-”

“I can't see.” she blurted. “I can't see out of it.”

“You can't?” The question came out more panicked than he'd intended. She had said that back at Save Lots, but he hadn't wanted to believe it was true.

His fear stoked Lilly's. “I'm blind. Oh my God I'm fucking blind!” She jerked upright, only to scream in pain and collapse onto her back once more. Her breathing came ragged and shallow. “No...no...”

“It's okay. It's okay, Lilly.” He hurried to calm her down, resting a hand on her shoulder. She pulled away and continued moaning.

“You can still see out of one eye, right?” he pressed. She needed to stay focused on the reality of the situation. Hysteria was the fastest way to go downhill in a medical emergency. He may have dropped out of college a year into his nursing degree, but he remembered that warning clearly.

“Y-yes.” She nodded, obviously trying to calm herself. “Yeah, my right eye is okay. But the left one...”

“Don't worry about the left one.” He resumed hunting for his peroxide. “Just – just focus on the good one, okay?”

“Pretty hard to do that when the bad one feels like you just got stabbed with a dirty knife.” She pawed at it some more, moaning weakly.

“You were unconscious for a while. The pain's probably already hit its peak.” He was completely bullshitting by that point, but it seemed to reassure Lilly a little bit.

The peroxide Eddie was sure he had was nowhere to be found. “I know I had peroxide in here, and alcohol wipes. All sorts of stuff that could clean a wound.” he mumbled. “But I can't find it.”

“I brought it upstairs.” Lilly kept her gaze averted, still cradling the wounded half of her face. “All the good stuff, it's up there.”

“How do I get up there?” She'd been very mysterious about it the first time. But now that she needed help, he was sure he would get an answer out of her.

Curling up on the makeshift bed, Lilly raised a trembling arm and pointed at a spot on the ceiling. It was the last tile before the ceiling merged with the wall, above a tall shelving unit. Eddie squinted at it, grabbing the battery-operated lantern from the nearby lower shelves. With the light on it he could just make out a crack running along the entire perimeter of the tile, separating it from the rest of the ceiling.

“You have to – _ugh_ ,” Another moan escaped her lips, and she clawed at the clothing beneath her. “You have to climb the shelf. It's sturdy...at least for me. I don't know about you.”

He doubted he was the same weight as Lilly. “I'll have to try, I guess.” He tested one foot on the bottom shelf. The metal squeaked under his weight. _Great. I'm gonna fall and break my damn neck._ He'd be a lot of help to Lilly then.

Sighing, he shook off his negative prediction and just went for it. One step after the other, like a ladder. It wasn't too difficult, though he feared at any moment the shelf would give way and send him crashing to the cement floor. But it didn't. He made it to the top, pushed aside the tile that was only loosely set in with the others, and then pulled himself up into the ceiling level.

The “attic” of the store was completely black. He could feel himself brushing cobwebs as he crawled forward, hoping to bump into boxes at some point. Something squeaked a few feet away. Must have been that damn mouse. _Jesus, how did Lilly sleep up here?_

The supplies she had tucked away were hidden well. Or rather, they would have been, had Eddie not crawled right into a pile of them. He plucked a thing out of the pile and quickly ran his hands over it. It felt like the round, slightly sticky canister of antibacterial wipes he'd had in the box with the peroxide. Knowing that, the other things he felt out perfectly matched what he was expecting. This was his stuff. He grabbed the wipes and a pill bottle, what he assumed had to be the last of the painkillers he'd brought with him, and filled his pockets with whatever felt small enough to fit in there.

After fishing out a rectangular plastic bottle with a rough surface and a large cap on top – what had to be the peroxide – Eddie began crawling back toward the opening in the ceiling. He'd been stupid not to bring the lantern up there, he realized on the way back. The only thing that reassured his stupid decision was the thought that Lilly probably wouldn't have wanted to be alone in the dark down there.

He descended the shelves with as much grace as he had ascended them – which is to say, not much. Before climbing down he set the peroxide, wipes, and pills on the shelf space where he would not be stepping.

Halfway down in his climb he decided to just jump the rest of the way. He landed with a grunt, then grabbed the supplies up and brought them over to Lilly.

“Okay, I found the peroxide, and also some painkillers, if you want them.”

“Oh God, give them to me.” Lilly murmured, her face still buried in her hands.

He popped open the child-proof cap and poured out the remaining small, round pills. He had eight left.

“It's only ibuprofen, but...” He dumped most of the pills back in, keeping two in his hand. That was the maximum dosage a person was supposed to take at one time. “Here, take these.”

Lilly snatched them from his outstretched hand. She was still shaking, hard.

“Okay, now where's my – shit, my water bottles are probably upstairs-”

Lilly gulped the pills down dry.

“Uh. Okay.” Eddie began pouring some peroxide onto an alcohol wipe. “Glad you were able to do that. Now this, it's gonna kind of sting...”

“No shit it's gonna sting. It's a gaping wound and you've got peroxide.” Lilly groaned as she sat up, reluctantly accepting her fate.

Eddie knelt down beside her. He held the wipe up near her face. “Okay, hold still. It'll only sting for a minute.”

He braced himself for her to smack him. It was going to burn like hell, and they both knew it.

“Fuck!” The peroxide made contact with the wound above her eye. “Oh my – shit! Fuck!” Lilly recoiled in pain.

“I know. I'm sorry.” He followed her as she retreated further into the corner of the room. She bit her lip, wincing as he blotted at it some more.

Eddie was as careful as he could be with her. He lifted her chin with one hand and blotted her wound with the other. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and every so often a bit of liquid seeped from her blinded eye. He at first believed it to be a result of the injury. Then he noticed a matching droplet leaking from her other eye.

“D-don't cry.” He did his best to clean gently. The thought of hurting someone to the point of tears was not a pleasant one for him. He wanted to help her, not harm her. He had to remind himself more than once that in this case, harming her _was_ helping her.

“I'm not.” she replied, stoic as ever. Her voice quivered as she spoke. “But, God. It just hurts so fucking much.”

“I know.” He lowered the wipe. “Can I take a look at your eye?”

“Ugh. Go ahead.”

He lifted her eyelid. She groaned and pulled back a little. “Hold still,” he warned. She cursed him under her breath.

The eye was milky and clouded, as it had looked when he'd gotten a brief glance at it earlier. Her dark brown iris was covered with a whitish film, except where it was slashed. Her pupil was sliced right down the middle. It had a dull, lifeless look to it, unlike the shine of her other eye. Fluid leaked out of the slice.

“That's wide open.” Eddie noted, trying not to be grossed out by the horrific eye gore he was looking at. “Anything can get in that cut.”

“We can't pour peroxide in my eye.”

“I know.” He sat back on his heels. “...This would probably go better if I had actually gotten my med degree. Can you sort of roll your eyes around a little? I want to see as much of it as I can.”

Lilly complied with only a small groan of pain. “You studied medicine?” she eventually asked.

“Only for about a year. Then I, uh, realized I was too stupid for college. I dropped out.”

“Glad to hear I'm in good hands, then.”

Eddie shrugged. “Sorry. I'm the best you've got right now.”

“So what are we going to do about the cut in my eye?” Lilly shifted back to the main topic. “You can't really clean that, and it'll definitely get infected if we leave it untouched.”

He didn't have any eye drops or eye rinse on him. And he had no idea where a person would find those sorts of things in this world anyway – everything medicinal had been looted from Save Lots already. The only solution he could think of would be horribly painful...

Lilly picked up on his hesitation. “You have something in mind.”

“Yeah.” He glanced down at the peroxide bottle. Pure peroxide in the eye would be an infernal hell of agony, especially in an area that was already irritated. But if he could dilute it in some water, maybe just splash a few drops into the cut...it could work.

“I could mix a little peroxide into a capful of water,” he eventually said. “Use it like an eye rinse.”

“That'll burn like hell.”

“Yeah.”

Lilly sighed. “For Christ's sake...fine. Let's try it.”

The water to dilute it was still upstairs. Eddie had to try his luck once again with the rickety shelves, crawling back up into the dark and disturbing little alcove above them. This time he brought down as much as he could carry supply-wise, not wanting to make another trip up there until he absolutely had to.

Setting the water down with the rest of the supplies, Eddie unscrewed the cap on the peroxide bottle again. He let a few tiny drops fall into the inside of the cap. Then he opened the water bottle and filled the peroxide cap the rest of the way with water.

Lilly pulled a thick white sweater from her bed pile and bit down on the sleeve. “Okay, I'm ready.” she mumbled through clenched teeth.

Eddie guided her to tilt her head back. With one hand behind her head, he lifted the cap up to her eye and began gently tipping it. “Keep your eye open as much as you can.”

A muffled scream told him when the solution made contact with her eye. The sweater sleeve served to quiet her shrieks of pain, obviously the reason she'd stuffed it in her mouth to begin with. Eddie held her eyelid open as he tipped the solution the rest of the way into her wounded eye.

It didn't take long for Lilly's fingers to wrap around Eddie's arms, instinctively trying to push him away. Her nails dug into his jacket sleeves and practically shredded them.

“Just another second.” Eddie spilled the last of the capful into Lilly's eye. She ground her teeth on the sweater fabric, but her cries were stifled more by sheer willpower than by fabric.

Eddie blotted away the runoff of both peroxide solution and...other stuff. Eye fluid, a little bit of pinkish blood. What was perhaps the trail of a teardrop or two. Her damaged eye still tried desperately to protect itself, despite being all but ruined.

Eddie set the towel down at his side. Lilly's eyes snapped shut as soon as he removed his fingers from her eyelids.

“Holy fuck.” Lilly spat out the sweater sleeve and immediately brought her hands back up to her face. “Holy fuck, I feel like my eye is on fucking fire.”

“It's way less likely to get infected now, though.”

“I know, but...Jesus. Fuck.”

Eddie closed the peroxide bottle and set it aside. “Sorry. I know that must've killed.” She'd practically torn his arms off in the process.

Lilly rubbed her good eye. “You're lucky I didn't have a weapon handy.”

There was a stutter to her voice. It had formed as soon as she'd woken up after her injury, but it was more pronounced now. It seemed directly related to the intense pain she was in. Or perhaps she was truly shaken. It was impossible to tell.

Eddie tried to muster a smile. “Well, at least the worst is over now. It's done. And you're okay.”

“Except for losing fifty percent of my eyesight.”

His smile fell. Lilly shook her head and swore to herself.

“Um, well...” He searched for something reassuring to say. “At least you're not alone.”

“For now.”

“I'm not gonna leave.”

Lilly's eyes narrowed as she stared down at the floor. “...What did that guy have against you, anyway? He flipped out as soon as he saw you. I knew he was kind of crazy, but I've never seen him act like that before.”

He'd feared Lilly would ask. The truth of the situation was not something he wanted to tell, but he knew he owed her that much. She'd just lost her eye because of him.

“I killed his friend.”

Lilly raised her eyebrows in surprise, but waited for him to elaborate.

“My friend and I were out in the woods, 'cause, you know, we had to pee. And you can't really pee in a car. Unless you want to pee in a bottle, but that's a pain in the ass-”

“So you were out in the woods,” Lilly put his story back on track.

“Oh, uh, yeah. We were out in the woods, and we ran into this group of dirty-looking dudes. I guess they lived out there. Anyway, they gave us kind of a hard time, but they weren't too bad. I think they assumed we didn't have much for them to take. So they left us alone. Wyatt and I went to find a place away from them, and then...we heard rustling. You know, movement. I thought – I could've _sworn_ it was a walker.”

“I'm assuming it wasn't.” Lilly said flatly.

“It scared me. I thought it was coming after us. So...I shot at it. It was stupid, looking back – even if it _was_ a walker, I should never have been shooting a gun in the middle of the woods. But I wasn't thinking. I just, did it.” Eddie lowered his eyes. “And it was a guy. I killed him.”

After daring to steal a glance up at Lilly, expecting a look of horror, or at least disapproval, Eddie was surprised to find that she didn't look all that fazed by his story. She was still just watching him, waiting for the rest of the tale.

“Of course the forest guys came running. They were yelling, and they pulled out guns. That guy, though, he was at the front of their pack, and he didn't even yell or anything. He just charged us with this crazy look on his face. I was trying to apologize to him, but he wasn't listening. Wyatt grabbed me and then we were just running. Running and running. It felt like forever until we reached my car. We jumped in and drove off, thinking that'd be the last we saw of them. Then that truck appeared on the road behind us. That guy chased us for miles.

“I was driving in the dark, with no headlights on, trying to lose him. We did lose him, for a while. But I couldn't really see the road, and I was never expecting a guy to be crossing the street...” He hesitated. “I hit a guy.”

“You hit a guy?” That part actually seemed to surprise Lilly. “In the middle of... _this,_ ” She threw her arms out in a gesture he assumed meant 'in this world', “You managed to hit a pedestrian?”

“I know, right?” He raised his voice unintentionally. Lilly shushed him. “I was _not_ expecting a guy to be in the middle of the road,” he said more quietly. “My friend and I rock-paper-scissored to see who would go out there and check on him. Wyatt lost, so he went.”

“What a logical way to decide something that serious and dangerous.”

“It was the only fair way to decide.”

“ _You_ hit the guy. You should've been the one to check on him, not your friend.”

Eddie sighed. “Yeah, I know. But at the time it was just, like, I don't know...it seemed fair.” He raked his fingers back through his greasy black hair. “Anyway, Wyatt went to check on the guy, and I stayed in the car. While he was gone...that dude in the truck showed up again. He started attacking me, trying to get the car door open and grab me. I was trying to fend him off, to stall 'til Wyatt got back. But he was gonna kill me.”

He swallowed hard. Somehow this almost felt like the worst part of the story to him. Especially since he was about to tell it to someone he was currently surviving with, who already didn't trust him at all.

“I took off, like an asshole. I drove off. I left my friend and let God-knows-what happen to him.” He buried his face in his hands. The memories of that moment still haunted him, and he thought of Wyatt constantly. It was a guilt that would follow him to his grave. If he was lucky enough to get a grave.

Lilly's good eye fixed on him. He waited for her to weigh in, to tell him he was an asshole or something. But she said nothing. Instead she simply watched him for a few long, quiet moments. Then her expression changed. It softened, and she looked almost...pleased? Maybe “pleased” wasn't the right word – but she definitely didn't look _dis_ pleased.

“Uh.” He cleared his throat. “So, yeah. That's it.”

Lilly nodded. “That's good to know,” she said vaguely.

“Good to know? Why, are you gonna use it against me?”

“I might.”

He guessed she was bluffing, but he couldn't be sure. She watched him intently as he tried to figure out what to say next.

“Well, it's in the past now.” he decided to say. “I learned from it. I can't undo it...but I can move on and try to do good to make up for it. That's all.”

Lilly leaned back and stared up at the ceiling for a long while. Occasionally a small groan of pain escaped her lips, but other than that she was quiet. Her left hand hovered near her wounded eye but did not touch it.

Eddie sighed again. He missed his friends. Lilly didn't seem to be a bad person, but she wasn't his best friend. He couldn't bring up old memories with her. They couldn't look back on old times and laugh about them. Hell, he didn't even know if he could trust her. They shared no common ground other than the both of them being survivors in this shitty world.

“It's in the past, but you still did it.” Lilly said after a while.

“I know that.” he mumbled.

Lilly grunted. “Well, you told me your story. If we're going to keep surviving together, I guess I owe you mine.”

“Only if you're comfortable sharing it.”

“It doesn't really matter if I'm comfortable sharing it or not.” Lilly rubbed her good eye, an obvious attempt to keep her left hand occupied and away from her injured eye. “If you don't trust me you'll sacrifice me in a pinch.”

Eddie's first reaction was to protest, but he found no words to do so. Wasn't she right? Wouldn't he leave her behind if he felt he couldn't trust her?

Lilly's glassy left eye, dead in its socket, lingered on him. He knew she couldn't see out of it anymore, but still it unsettled him. He looked away.

“I _hope_ you would try to take me out if you thought I was untrustworthy.” Lilly added. “I'd do the same. It's how you stay alive out here. Otherwise you're letting rats into your base. Letting them take from you and strip you of everything you have. Letting them rob you and use your good heart to get away with it.” Her voice took on a note of anger. It sounded as though she were speaking from experience, as was the case with many of her ominous predictions.

“I killed a woman.” Lilly's voice dropped back down into a tone of cold apathy. “I couldn't trust her. So I killed her.”

Eddie's eyes widened. He had been struggling to live with the fact that he'd accidentally taken a life. Then here was Lilly, boldly admitting to murder.

“She had been stealing from our group, giving medical supplies to bandits. She was sneaking into my room at night and robbing me while I slept.” She narrowed her eyes. “Our base ended up falling because those bandits attacked us. We got away in the – in my RV. We drove for miles, all night long. At one point we had to stop because the man driving hit a walker in the road. That was when I pulled everyone out of the vehicle and confronted her outside.” Lilly's lips curved into a nasty scowl. “She cursed me out, called me a bunch of shitty things. Told me I never helped anyone.”

“You helped me.” Eddie added without thinking.

“I helped a lot of people. I was the reason that ragtag group of stupid assholes survived as long as they did.” Her shoulders drooped as the anger drained from her voice. “I didn't like being told that. I always tried to be a good person. She didn't do anything in our group to help. All she did was complain about my leadership skills while she never offered to do a goddamn thing. So when she started telling me I never helped anyone, I couldn't – I didn't want to hear that. Especially not from some rotten fucking thief. So I pulled out my gun and I shot her, right there.”

“Because she was robbing you? Or because of what she said?” Eddie asked the question as gently as he could, trying not to sound accusatory.

Lilly's jaw clenched.

Eddie reached out and hesitantly touched her arm. Her muscles tensed at his touch.

“It's okay if what she said hurt you,” he said, slowly, searching for a better response. “I'd be mad if someone said that to me. And I mean, killing people isn't really the best way to resolve hurt feelings, but...”

She shrugged him off. “She didn't ' _hurt my feelings_ '. That's not why I did what I did.”

Eddie drew back. “...Oh. Sorry.”

Lilly's scowl deepened. “Anyway, I killed her and the group tied me up and threw me in the back of the RV. They were going to kill me, too. So I left.”

“You left?”

“Yeah.”

“Even though you were tied up?”

“It was a weak knot.” Lilly said. “I have years of military training. I know how to get out of being tied up. Especially when the knot is as shitty as theirs was.” Tempering the slight anger that had crept into her voice, she resumed in her usual flat tone, “The moron driving left the keys in the RV, assuming I wouldn't be able to free myself. So the minute they stepped out of it I jumped in the driver's seat and took off. I never saw any of them again. They had no vehicle once I took the RV, so I assume they're likely dead.”

“Oh.” _Damn_ , he thought. _Lilly really was born to be a survivor._

Lilly exhaled slowly. “So that's my story. The important parts of it, anyway. And you know what happened from there. I drove around and survived on my own for a while, you showed up and tried to steal gas from the RV, I spared your life and took you on board with me, and now we're here.”

She fell silent after that. Eddie thought over her tale. Lilly murdered someone. Not by accident like he had, but _intentionally_. And then, like him, she'd run from the consequences, leaving her fellow survivors without a vehicle and without protection.

“Do you regret it?” he asked.

“Do I regret what?”

He'd been thinking of the abandonment part of her story, but truly he was curious about every aspect. “Any of it.”

She paused, formulating a response. Any emotion on her face was quickly masked. “No, I don't regret any of it.” she finally replied. “It all led to keeping me alive. Being able to make tough choices is what separates the average person from the survivor.”

“Or maybe it's just dumb luck.” he murmured, thinking of his own survival thus far.

Lilly shook her head. “No. It has to do with the kind of person you are. The kind of person you can be.”

He laughed a little. “Well I'm not some tough-ass survivor like you are, and I'm still here.”

“You've made tough choices just like I have.” Her response was immediate, as if she'd anticipated his protest. “Your first instinct when you heard something in the forest was 'shoot to kill'. You ran from danger and left your friend behind because waiting for him would've minimized your chances of survival. And when you met me you recognized that I'm stronger and more capable than you. So you swallowed your pride, backed down and offered a compromise.”

A little stunned by her bluntness, Eddie wasn't sure what to say.

“You're not tough,” she finished, “But you're a survivor. I told you before that being prey is an art. And you've mastered it.”

Eddie sat back a little. There was that term again – prey. That seemed to be what Lilly considered him above all else. She believed he was good at it, and maybe he was. After all, he'd never had stellar luck before all this happened – maybe there wasn't some finicky force of fate keeping him alive on a whim. Maybe he _was_ good at surviving, in his own way.

“The only people left in this world now are the ones who have adapted to either being a predator or being prey.” Apparently not finished after all, Lilly picked the metaphor back up and continued beating it into him. “The ones who are the most fit for their role survive. You're alive because you've adapted to running and hiding. Same as I have.”

One thing had been bothering him about Lilly's analogy ever since she'd first brought it up. “But you're a fighter, too.” he said. “You're strong, and fast, and Jesus, you had that knife to my throat before I even realized what was happening. You don't seem like prey to me.”

Without thinking Lilly went to rub her wounded eye. She hissed on contact, immediately jerking her hand away.

“I've been thinking about this a lot,” she murmured, sitting on her hands to prevent them from straying back to her face. “That's what I've figured out. Aggressive prey is still prey. You can see the difference. That guy in the blue truck, he's a predator. He goes looking for trouble. I just happen to stumble into it...”

“Or it brings itself to you.” he added, scratching idly at his chin scruff.

“Yeah. Sometimes it sneaks up on me.”

“Tries to, anyway.” He smiled a little.

The corners of her mouth turned up just the tiniest bit. “Yeah. It tries to.” She drew in a quiet, shaky breath. “But it's not such a bad thing, I guess. Always running from danger. Sometimes that little bit of excitement gives you something to keep going for.”

“Even though it got you, y'know...wounded?”

Lilly's shoulders sagged. “Well, I wish this hadn't happened. But, alone...I was probably better off from a survival perspective, but it wasn't good for me mentally.”

“Yeah.” He understood that feeling well. “Being alone can drive you crazy.”

“Mhm.” She leaned her head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. “It's gonna take a while to get used to one eye being useless.” She changed the subject, sweeping her eyes across the tiled ceiling. “I keep thinking something's covering it.”

“I'm assuming it still hurts like hell?” Those painkillers weren't even very effective on headaches. Serious eye trauma, and having peroxide poured into one's eye afterward, wouldn't be alleviated by a couple of ibuprofen.

“I kind of feel like I'm going to throw up from the pain,” she replied. “So yes.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how bad is it right now?” In med school they'd taught him to always get a pain rating out of a patient if possible. It made measuring their recovery a lot easier.

“I want to say ten, but I'll say nine-point-five.” she said. “Could be worse, I guess. I'm conscious.”

Pain scores, of course, were relative to each patient. A single score didn't mean much – the pain could be excruciating, or the patient could just have a very low tolerance for it. He'd have to ask her later to rate it again in order to make any real use of the numbers.

“Hey,” Lilly spoke up while Eddie was still thinking about his old medical lessons.

He leaned over to her like a concerned nurse. “Yeah?”

“We're sealed in here pretty well. I don't think anything would be able to get in without trying pretty damn hard.”

He waited, seeing where she was going with that.

Lilly sat up and away from the wall, resting her elbows on her bony knees. “You had weed in your car. I took it and it's in one of the boxes here.”

He'd already forgotten about it. “Yeah, I did have some.” He'd been too scared to smoke it after losing Wyatt. Nobody wanted to be stoned and alone in the apocalypse.

Lilly chewed her lip pensively. “I'm just thinking about that.”

“Do you want it?” He tried to drag her point out of her. She could be so indirect about things.

She shrugged. “I'm just thinking about how I used to smoke in high school. It helped when I had cramps and stuff. I'm thinking, since we have it, maybe it'd help with this pain. And with the feeling that I'm going to puke from it.”

Eddie folded his arms. It probably would help her. Even if it didn't alleviate the pain completely, it would at least help to take her mind off it.

“It's in one of the boxes down here.” She nodded to the couple of picked-over boxes in the corner. “I didn't bother bringing it upstairs because it didn't seem like something I would want or need.” She laughed bitterly. “Funny how quickly your needs can change.”

Eddie got up and headed over to the boxes. Behind him Lilly groaned again, more of a hiss between her clenched teeth as she tried not to be heard. He pretended he didn't hear her as he dug through the boxes for his precious magic medicine.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hey everyone. Thanks for sticking with my story thus far. I wanted to make a little note for the people who are unfamiliar with the "Season 2 Lilly" fan design that that's where the inspiration for Lilly's unfortunate luck in this fanfic came from. The first S2 Lilly artwork I have saved is from April 19th, 2014 - almost a month before In Harm's Way released and [SPOILER] Kenny lost his eye. This fanfic has also been in the works since around that time. I'm just putting this as a disclaimer that this story is not intending to copy Kenny's plotline, haha. It was just an unfortunate coincidence that Telltale had the same idea as the Lilly fandom (or maybe they copied us. Who knows).
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading!


	9. Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love Song)

Lilly didn't seem much different when she was high. A little less tense, maybe. But other than that she was basically the same. She sat in the corner with the lantern, scribbling something in her notebook while Eddie lit up in the opposite corner of the room. He breathed out a lungful of smoke as Lilly muttered something to herself.

“Damn it, I'm off the lines.” she growled under her breath. “Stupid eye.”

“What're you writing, anyway?” He leaned back against the wall and stretched his tired limbs.

Lilly capped her pen. “I try to keep a log of daily events. Someday it might be useful to someone. Though not really like this...the words dip way under the lines and I didn't even realize that until just now. It's a mess.”

He tilted his head. “What kind of things do you write in there?”

“I usually mention weather conditions, walker density, number of survivors I see...things like that.” She closed the notebook. “Statistics and numbers, as far as I can measure them. Basically things people will want to know in the future. When they study us.”

Eddie shuffled over to her and sat down a few feet away. “They?” His first thought was that she was talking about something like aliens. He was, admittedly, intrigued.

Lilly set the notebook down at her side. “I don't think this world is ever going back to the way it was before. But I don't think humans are going to die off. Someday people will try to rebuild society. And when they do, they're going to want to look to the past for answers. There won't _be_ any answers for this mess unless people keep records of it.”

He knew the buzz of the weed must have kicked in for him, because her explanation sounded like the deepest, most philosophical shit he'd ever heard. “Wow.” was all he could say in response.

Lilly pushed the notebook under a shelf. “Sometimes I feel like it's not worth it, that nobody is ever going to care about the life of one no-name survivor. But it's just something I need to do. Makes me feel like everything I'm going through matters. Like my life matters.”

The sudden emotional downturn of her words underscored a concern they apparently both wrestled with – the lack of any grander purpose in their nasty, brutish, and likely-to-be-short lives. It wasn't a topic he wanted to tackle while he was high, because that just made him overthink things. This wasn't an issue he wanted to overthink. Or to think about at all, honestly.

“I know how you feel.” Unfortunately Eddie didn't know how to even begin consoling her. This was an issue he could barely deal with himself. “It's hard for me to deal with that feeling too, since I feel like I just fuck up a lot and that's pretty much it.” He stroked the soft wool of his coat hanging beside him with one idle hand. It felt nice. “The most I can usually come up with is that I guess someday I might be able to 'keep the species going' or whatever. Someday when I'm not living in fear every minute.”

Lilly's eyes narrowed at the floor, her blind eye mimicking the good one as if it were still functional.

He'd misspoken somehow. Her wordless reaction was very clear about that.

“Um, sorry if that made you, like, uncomfortable or anything.” he quickly backpedaled. “I wasn't trying to sound like that pervert from Save Lots. I just meant, I mean, that _is_ what I tell myself sometimes. But I don't just see women like that. And I'm not looking for that right now. This would be, like, waaaay in the future. If things get safer.”

Lilly tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It had fallen when she'd lowered her chin to glare down at the floor. “I know what you meant.” she uttered. “And don't worry. I wouldn't be able to help you with that anyway.”

His first interpretation of her response was Lilly justifiably rejecting any offer he might make before he could even make it. Which he would never do, because even if he was as trashy and perverted as that Save Lots guy he would still be _way_ too afraid of Lilly to ever consider asking something like that. But as his foggy brain turned her words over a few times and examined them, he realized she may have meant something very different.

“You, uh...'wouldn't be able' to help?” He probed very carefully for an explanation, trying not to give her the wrong idea with his pressing of the issue.

Lilly reached up and massaged her temples. “Ugh, now I remember why I stopped smoking. I say the stupidest shit...” She pulled her hands away from her face and sighed. “It's not any of your business, but I brought it up, so I guess I'll explain. For whatever reason – luck, fate, God not wanting any more descendants of my family line in the world, I don't know – I was born with a...problem. A defect, I guess. Basically the long and short of it is that – God, this is awkward to tell to a guy.” She cut herself off, twisting her lips in a look of discomfort.

“You don't have to tell me, Lilly.” It was pretty clear what she was getting at. “I think I know what you're saying.”

The look of discomfort softened to a more neutral gaze, though she continued to stare at the floor. “So I don't even have that going for me. From an evolutionary standpoint I'm a complete waste of resources. I say I want the human race to survive, yet here I am consuming food and supplies that people who actually _can_ further the human race should be consuming instead.” Her voice fell to just above a whisper. “But I'm selfish, and I want to live.”

“...Maybe smoking pot in the apocalypse wasn't the best thing for you.” Eddie replied after a long silence. He'd thought she wasn't really any different high, but now he could see it. She was one of those introspective stoners. She'd probably spend the rest of the day picking herself apart flaw by flaw if he didn't distract her with something else.

“Hey,” He joined Lilly sitting against the wall by the door. “I'm kinda curious about those old daily logs of yours. Would you be willing to read one to me?”

The question was enough to pull her away from her self-reflective doldrums, at least for a moment. “I guess I could.” She collected the notebook from the dusty abyss beneath the shelf. “I'm not a writer or anything, so it's nothing flowery or thought-provoking. I try to stick to the facts and not put too much emotion into it.”

He leaned over to glance at the notebook as she flipped through it. She skipped quickly past the first few pages. Skimming them over her shoulder, he caught a glimpse of a few proper nouns that looked like names. Something starting with a K. Something starting with either an L or an I – he couldn't tell before it was gone. Something starting with a C. The names were gone as quickly as he'd spotted them on the wrinkled, dirty pages.

“This is an earlier one,” Lilly latched onto an entry seemingly devoid of names. “Well, it's from after I parted ways with my group, but not long after. I left my first notebook behind when our base was raided, so I spent the first few pages of this one summing up the first notebook. This is where I started recording new things.”

Though he was trying to distract her from her negative introspection, Eddie truly was interested in hearing what Lilly considered important data for her imagined future researchers. So he sat and listened with rapt attention as she read aloud the entry she'd chosen.

_“Day 3 on my own. It's late October or early November, I think. The weather has cooled, but we still have warm days pretty consistently. It felt like it was about fifty degrees today. I have to wonder what's going to happen once winter comes to both the survivors and the walkers._

_I've been looking for a safe place to settle in. I know I can't drive this RV forever, especially once it gets cold. I already had to fix the old piece of shit once. Luckily it was during a quiet period when there weren't many walkers around. Times like that are few and far between out here. They roam equally day and night, they don't sleep or rest. So far I haven't noticed any differences in their behavior due to weather either, but on hotter days they smell worse. On those days you can detect one nearby you from their rotting stench alone._

_The forest isn't safe, but it's safer than the city. The only things cities have that the forest doesn't are supplies and fortified places to hide. It's pretty damn hard to hide a giant vehicle out here. Eventually I'll have to move on and take my chances in an urban environment again._

_I grabbed this notebook out of a wrecked gas station convenience store off Route 75, one of my first forays back into developed territory by myself. There were cars backed up the highway like it was the height of traffic – but of course they were all empty. No way of knowing whether they abandoned their cars or if they were grabbed right out of them. Either way, they're gone and the jam's been picked clean along its edges._

_No one dares to venture inside the car maze because there are dead ones under the cars and lurking inside some of them. It would be too easy to get jumped. Of course, that meant there was an untapped goldmine of gas and supplies in the midst of it. And I happened to be in need of both. So I went in, just a few car lengths, with an empty gas can I'd picked up from the gas station and the only remaining weapon I had, a handgun that one of my former group mates had left in the glove compartment of the RV.”_

“You looted the 75 strip by yourself?” Eddie piped up. “That place is fucking crawling with dead.” He'd tried to drive through there after he'd first left Wyatt. It really was a maze. Parked bumper-to-bumper like they were, you couldn't navigate the cars without climbing over some of them and making a ton of noise in the process. And walkers lurked everywhere.

“I was careful. And determined to make it out alive.” Lilly picked up the lantern and set it beside her for better reading light. “Maybe more out of spite than anything else. Anyway...” She continued reading after flipping to the next page.

_“I managed to secure some gas, but very little of anything else. A couple granola bars and some stale crackers from the backseat of a car with a child seat installed. A gallon jug of apple juice from the trunk of the same car. A small utility knife from a pickup truck. That was it. Either these people had taken everything with them when they fled their cars, or someone just as desperate as me had already clambered their way through the car maze and picked it clean._

_As of this moment I'm back inside my RV, parked off to the side of a woodsy dirt road apparently called Yewberry. It's a cool night, probably about forty degrees. It's only going to get colder as the weeks wear on. I need to find warmer clothing in the very near future.”_

There was another paragraph at the bottom of the entry, but she stopped reading at the end of the paragraph above it. “That's it.” she said abruptly as she closed the notebook.

“Oh.” He leaned back against the wall, no longer reading over her shoulder. “Well that was interesting.”

Lilly must have been able to tell by his tone that he'd seen the remaining unread paragraph. “The rest is just a record of mental and emotional health.” she murmured. “How I was feeling at the time. I'm not going to share that information.”

“Fair enough.” He remained leaning against the wall, staring into the darkness of the far end of the room. “Thanks for sharing any of it. It's pretty cool that you're doing that for future people.”

“If I die I hope someone would continue it.” she said, in the same flat tone she seemed to adopt whenever she talked about something grim or emotional.

Eddie turned toward her. Either she couldn't tell he was facing her or she chose to ignore it. He watched her for a moment before deciding on an answer to her dark request.

“If I somehow survive longer than you do,” he said, “Then yeah, I'll continue it for you.”

Lilly returned the notebook to its spot under the shelf. “God, I'm fucking stoned.” She dragged her hands across her face, concealing what looked to be a tiny smirk. “I used to be able to handle it a lot better. I must be out of practice.”

Eddie chuckled a little. “You're too hard on yourself. Seems like you're feeling better, though. Is that right?”

Lilly nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear even though it was already pretty tucked. “In the old days I was always that stoner no one wanted to be around. I just talked about how much everything sucked and why we were all doomed. My friends told me they didn't want me smoking with them anymore because I was too damn depressing.”

He tried not to laugh. “I was, uh, the opposite. Still am, kinda. When I'm stoned I think everything is super interesting and cool and I want to know everything about everything.”

“Yeah, I could kind of tell.” Her lips curled up again. She _was_ smirking. “Suddenly my notebook was so interesting to you.”

He almost spilled the truth, that he had taken interest in it to distract her from endlessly criticizing herself, but he caught himself before he did. She didn't need to know that he was looking out for her. It'd probably just make her mad.

“Well, you're an interesting person.” he said instead.

Her smirk evolved into a significant but fleeting, very momentary smile. It barely even graced her lips before it was gone, but for the split-second it was there, it lit up her face and masked the weariness of her weathered flesh. In that single second Eddie saw what must have been her pre-apocalypse demeanor. She was still young, probably not older than him. Life had laid a heavy burden on her and worn her down to her current appearance, but underneath that coarse exterior she was still just a young person trying to her find her way. Same as him.

“So, since we're in here for the long haul,” Lilly eventually spoke up, “Got any old stories to share? I could use some humor to distract me from being such a fucking downer. And from, you know, having been stabbed in the eye and all that.”

“You're in luck.” Eddie said. “Stupid funny stories are my specialty.”

Thinking back on some of his favorite old tales of dumb things he and his friends had done, he began relaying them to Lilly. Some of them resulted in her rolling her eyes and chastising him, but some brought her to actually laugh out loud. Encouraged by her response, Eddie talked on, warming the cold room with laughter from the two of them.

 


	10. Nebula

_One week later_

Eddie stood guard inside the doors of the barbershop. Seeing nothing outside, he glanced over his shoulder at Lilly. She sat at the farthest stool from the windows, her scrawny body not even filling the seat entirely. She was staring at herself in the large mirror before her. They'd found a pair of old, banged-up scissors in one of the drawers filled with combs and hair elastics. She clutched the scissors in her right hand, hovering near the ends of her long hair.

That man had grabbed her by her hair. That was how he'd pulled her back to him. She'd resolved after a couple of days that she could no longer afford to have long hair. She hadn't said a word about her feelings on the subject, but she hadn't needed to. The sorrowful look in her good eye spoke volumes.

Hesitating no longer, she began hacking away at her hair. Eddie clutched their gun, staring out the broken barbershop windows. The arrhythmic _snip, snip, snip_ of the scissors echoed through the empty shop as Lilly shed the last of her pre-apocalypse femininity.

They couldn't stay here much longer. Lilly had said so yesterday. That creep was still around, and he would surely find them before too much longer. There was no safety as long as people were actively pursuing them. Now that her eye wound was as healed as it was going to get, they would eventually have to move on if they wanted to survive.

Lilly murmured something.

“Huh?” Eddie turned his attention back to her.

“My mother loved my hair long.” she repeated, keeping all emotion from her voice.

“Oh.”

She snipped off a few more chunks. He noticed that she missed a few times. Her depth perception was still adapting to only being able to judge things with the signals from one eye. Her thick, wavy locks fell to the floor around her in clumps of varying size and length.

“I'm sure it'll still look nice even when it's short.” Eddie attempted to console her, realizing once the words were out of his mouth just how petty and irrelevant they sounded.

Lilly breathed a heavy sigh. “It shouldn't matter. It doesn't matter. The thought just crossed my mind, that's all.”

He wished he could leave her post and stay at her side. This was obviously an emotional moment for her. She was all about being the best survivor she could be – her long hair had been the one vulnerability she'd mysteriously left unmended. With the mention of her mother, he now understood why.

Spending a week stowed away in a back room together had taught them a lot about each other. When all you had to entertain yourself was conversation, talking quickly became a favorite way to pass the time. At first Lilly had mostly just listened, but after a while she had started to open up and tell him some stories of her past. One of those stories had been her mother's battle with cancer throughout Lilly's teenage years, and her loss when Lilly was just sixteen.

“Do you think this is short enough?” She spun the stool to face him. Her hair now just reached her shoulders.

“Um...” It was still long enough to be grabbed. Easily. He wasn't sure how to tell her that.

Thankfully she seemed able to read his hesitation well enough. She sighed, then resumed cutting.

Eddie glanced outside once more. There was nothing out there but a few walkers passing by on the far-off street. He stepped away from the window, took one more look outside just to be sure, then slipped over to Lilly's side.

Her cutting was jagged and uneven, the result of both cutting the hair herself and only having 50% vision with which to do so. “Hey, uh,” Eddie leaned on the back of the stool, meeting her eyes in the mirror. “You want me to, maybe...help you cut it?”

“I don't need help.” came her immediately reply. She snipped off a lock in front, significantly shorter than the bit beside it.

He had come to know her well enough to determine that her curt responses like that were often sidesteps, not refusals. He paused for a moment. “Will you show me how to cut it?” He reworded the question in a way that didn't make it look as if Lilly could not perform the task adequately herself.

Lilly hesitated. Then she handed the scissors to him.

Eddie gingerly placed his hands near her jawline and drew her hair behind her in one handful. He let it fall behind her to lay out what would constitute a relatively even line to cut along.

Lilly didn't say a word as he carefully snipped away at her hair. But her eyes traced every bit of it as it fell to the floor.

“Okay, that's enough.” she said. He'd barely taken off another inch.

“Lilly...” He didn't argue with her, but his tone was enough to convey the message. She was being difficult. He wouldn't have dared to disagree with her when they'd first met, but after spending every waking moment of the past week in her company he had begun to learn when it was “acceptable” to object to her orders.

Lilly growled.

“It can still be grabbed at this length.” He kept his tone as neutral as possible. “It's not safe. You know it, I know it, and creeps like that guy at Save Lots know it.”

Lilly seemed about to protest. Then she lowered her tense shoulders and exhaled. “Don't cut it any shorter.” Her words were spoken more like a concession than a rebuttal, as if she were allowing him to do something. “Just straighten it out.”

“I already straightened it, it's-”

“Straighten it some more.”

He realized what she was getting at. It _was_ a concession. A very roundabout, defensive concession. He continued cutting.

Despite its greasiness, Lilly's hair was really nice. It was a little rough, and thick and wavy – the kind of hair you could bury your hands in when you were kissing her.

He cleared his throat, surprising himself with that thought. Lilly glanced up at him in the mirror. He quickly averted his eyes. _Come on man, now's not the time for that shit,_ he reprimanded himself. Still, he couldn't help but think about how things could have been if they hadn't met under such terrible circumstances. All of his girlfriends had been like Lilly. Lovingly aggressive. Aggressively loving. Abigail and Lilly probably would have been the best of friends.

“Are you going to cut it?” Lilly interrupted his thoughts. “Or are you going to just keep...”

Eddie realized with a surge of embarrassment that, instead of pulling her hair back to cut it straight, he'd simply been running his fingers through its remaining length. Lilly's good eye studied him in the mirror's reflection. Her expression was difficult to read.

“S-sorry.” He untangled his fingers and resumed snipping. Lilly rubbed her glassy left eye and looked away.

He cut until her hair just barely reached her chin. It still could be grabbed, but far less easily. The attacker would have to be quite skilled at hair-pulling to grab her by this length. “Do you want to stop there?” he asked.

“Yeah...that's good.” She slid off the stool and brushed the stray hair off her lap. “It's safer than it was.”

“It still looks nice.” He was no barber, but the cut had actually turned out pretty decent. It almost didn't even look like it had been hacked at by someone with 50% vision and then finished by someone who had never cut a woman's hair in his life.

“It doesn't matter if it looks nice or not. It's the only safe option.” She paused. “But thank you.”

Eddie dismissed her gratitude with a smile and a headshake. They hesitated for a moment, just watching one another. Eddie felt his face warm as he recalled his thought from earlier.

“You have a look on your face.” Lilly broke the silence that had settled over them in that moment.

“Huh?” Eddie blinked. “A look?”

“Yes. A look.”

“I see...and, um, what kind of look would it be?”

Lilly crossed her arms over her chest. She pursed her lips, not entirely unsympathetic in appearance. “I know what that look means,” she said. “Eddie...”

He braced himself for a scolding. He knew it was stupid to be thinking of that sort of thing in this sort of world. But he couldn't help thinking about it every once in a while – he was human, after all. And a romantic human, at that.

Lilly sighed, searching for her next words. “You're a sweet guy.” she finally said. “Any other time I would've jumped on a guy like you. But in this world...people can be torn from you so easily. I'd rather not get any more attached to another survivor than I have to. You know?”

The confession surprised him. He'd expected a tongue-lashing, not an honest rejection due to circumstance. “I understand.” He nodded. “It's totally fine. I'm sorry for getting all weird in the first place.”

“Well, it's not really 'totally fine'.” Lilly ran a hand through her short hair. “Because it's already happened.”

“What's already happened?”

“I'm more attached than I'd like to be.”

Her good eye pinned Eddie with a piercing stare. He practically flinched under her harsh gaze. But it was hollow, her glare. She was trying to be irritated, to be disgusted with him and maybe with herself. But the feelings simply didn't ring true.

“Well, if it means anything, I think it's good to get attached to people.” He did his best to maintain eye contact, even under her scrutinizing glare. “It keeps you feeling human. It gives you something to live for. Something to wake up to every morning.”

“Something to fear losing every minute.”

“If you detach yourself from everybody then what's the point of living?” The argument rolled off his tongue before he even knew what he was saying. “Sure you have nothing to lose, but that's because you have nothing.”

She raised an eyebrow, apparently as surprised by his refutation as he was.

“And I'm not talking about sex or romance. I don't even care about that shit,” he added. “I mean just in general. I had nothing for months before I met you. Every day was a game of convincing myself life was worth living. It wasn't a game I was very good at...and some days I'd lose. I'd sit on the hood of my car and wish I wasn't too wimpy to kill myself. I actually felt like being dead would be better than living the shitty, bare-minimum existence I had going for me then.”

Lilly opened her mouth to say something, but Eddie pressed on.

“When I met you,” he continued, “Suddenly I had something to live for. Yeah, I was scared shitless at first, but it was exciting. It was something new, and it gave me hope. And then I got to know you. And hell, I really like you. Not in a weird or creepy way, but just as one person who really respects and admires another person. Who just enjoys the fact that the other person is in their life. That's how I feel about it.”

Lilly maintained a poker face, but she was watching him intently.

“Since we've been together,” Eddie said, “I haven't thought about killing myself _once_. And yeah, I'm afraid of what might happen in the future, but I'm not gonna let that stop me from enjoying other people as much as I possibly can.”

Lilly bit her lip, still just watching him.

Her stare unnerved him, but he persevered. “What I'm saying, I guess, is that it's not bad or stupid to get attached to other people. Maybe you think it makes you weak, or vulnerable, but you know what? I think it makes you strong. Because it means you haven't let this shit-ass world ruin your whole life.”

He wasn't sure what kind of reaction he'd expected from Lilly, but it wasn't the one he got. Lilly studied his face for a moment. Then she pushed past him and walked away.

“Hey, where are you going?” Eddie followed her to the front of the barbershop. She stared out the window, refusing to look at him. “You're not, like, mad or-”

“Someone's outside the store.” Lilly flattened herself against the opaque doorway and peered out the door's scratched glass.

“What?” He immediately dropped to a crouch beside her. A glance out the window told him Lilly was right. A dingy-looking man in jeans and a t-shirt was sifting through the garbage cans out in front of the clothing store. His pale face was caked with dirt and grime, and his clothes hung off him even worse than Lilly's.

“I don't recognize him.” Lilly whispered. “He's not one of the Save Lots regulars.”

The man tried the front door of the clothing store. Locked, of course. He investigated the front windows for weaknesses, but found them all securely boarded.

“He knows there's something good in there.” Lilly narrowed her eyes on him. “He knows that's why it's so heavily protected.”

“What are we gonna do with him?”

“He probably has friends. Even if he leaves, we won't be safe. He'll tell them he found something good and they'll all storm the place.”

Eddie swallowed. “Then...we have to...”

Lilly exhaled a heavy breath. Drawing her handgun, she nudged the door open ever so slightly.

The man, apparently unaware that a store could have side or rear entrances, began kicking at the boarded-up glass. The noise was enough to cover Lilly and Eddie's footsteps as they crept across the lot.

“He's gonna get in.” Eddie breathed as they slipped behind an abandoned car a stretch away from the storefront.

“He's making way too much noise.” Lilly peered over the trunk of the car. “He's going to attract walkers.”

They both knew the man had to go. Eddie guessed Lilly was hesitant to approach him because of what happened the last time, with the Save Lots guy. This man seemed violent, and he seemed desperate. Desperation was one of the most dangerous motivators in an apocalypse. A man with nothing to lose had nothing to fear.

Lilly lifted her gun and aimed it over the car at the man. “Fucker has to go.” she muttered. Her hands trembled slightly as she clutched the beat-up weapon.

Her desire to kill the stranger had an obvious source. The man before them was not just another survivor, not in Lilly's eyes and not really in Eddie's either. Whoever the man may have been, to them he was the wild-eyed man in the blue truck. The man who had tried for Eddie's life more than once, had possibly taken Wyatt's life, had harassed and degraded Lilly, and had attacked her and taken her left eye. He was the same fear, the same frightening unknown. The same feeling of betrayal, as one realized that other survivors could very well be the most dangerous part of this new world.

Lilly struggled to fix the gun on the man. It was clear she couldn't aim as well as she once could.

“We have to do this.” Eddie said, as much to himself as to Lilly. “He's dangerous. He might – he'll hurt us.”

Lilly nodded almost imperceptibly, clamping her teeth down on her bottom lip.

“Sometimes you – you just have to do it.” he continued.

“Yeah. I have to.”

The man managed to kick a sizable crack in the front window. Once the glass was shattered the boards and clothing racks wouldn't be enough to hold.

Eddie knelt beside her, and rested his head almost against Lilly's. He looked over the barrel of the gun at the same time she did. Cautiously he laid his hand over Lilly's as she settled a finger on the trigger.

_We can't let what happened before happen again._ He wasn't going to lose the only good thing this shit world had given him. This man was a predator trying to hunt them down. The world was full of predators now – the prey had to fight back, or die.

“Not just you.” he whispered as his finger curled around the trigger. “What we're doing now...it's on both of us.”

He couldn't be sure who finally pulled the trigger. His finger was laid on top of Lilly's, and they both pulled back at seemingly the same time.

The crack of the gunshot rang out in the open air. A flock of birds settled in one of the tiny parking lot trees all scattered in different directions, screaming in fear. The man outside the store sank to his knees and then collapsed forward.

They hadn't managed a headshot. Investigating his body they found they'd hit him in the high chest. Lilly jabbed her knife into his temple as quickly as she could.

“Every walker for miles heard that.” She laid the man back down on the pavement. “We search this guy, then we hole up and hope that cracked glass holds until we can get out of here.”

Eddie searched the man's front pockets. He found nothing but a small, dull knife. Flipping the man over, he investigated the back pockets. There he found something of interest.

“What's this?” he asked out loud as he fished the folded-up map out of the man's jeans. A piece of folded notebook paper tumbled out from inside. Lilly caught it and opened it.

The map turned out to be a United States road map. On it a red path was clearly marked from Warner Robins, Georgia up to northern Ohio, practically into Michigan. It ended in a spot marked with a bold 'X'.

“Guess this guy was heading to Ohio,” Eddie murmured.

“Look at this.” Lilly pushed the notebook paper into his hands. In quick, scratchy script, the paper read:

 

_Ian,_

_We tried for a place called Wellington in Ohio. We've heard from others that it's the only safe haven left that we could get to without a boat. If you find this, if you're still alive...that's where we'll be._

_The kids are starting to believe you're dead. I'm not sure what to believe...but I'll be waiting for you. I won't give up hope._

_Sophie_

_P.S. - I've heard it's cold up there, so try to pick up some winter clothes on the way if you can._

_I'll see you soon._

_Love you._

 

They stood there in silence for a long few moments. “That explains why he was trying to get into a clothing store so badly.” Lilly eventually said.

“This guy was a dad.” Eddie felt like he was about to throw up. This guy had a family waiting for him in Ohio. He must have been on this way there. This road led right to the northbound highway.

His hands began to tremble as he clutched the map. Lilly shook her head as her good eye scanned the note again and again.

“...We had to do it.” He repeated his justification from before. “He was going to take everything we had.”

“Right.” Lilly crumpled the note in her hand. Her gaze fell to the body lying near them. “You're right.”

“This doesn't make us bad people. We were – we were just defending ourselves.” He wasn't sure how much he believed what he was saying, but it sounded good. “He was in our territory. We had to defend it.”

“Of course.” Lilly weakly agreed.

“And now we have to pack up whatever we've got and leave. Because walkers are definitely coming after that gunshot, and there's a crack in the front window, and that creep from Save Lots is still around here somewhere, and we're kind of sitting ducks if we stick around.”

That seemed to pull Lilly out of her disorientated state. “Yeah, you're right.” She took a step toward the store. “We have to go.”

They left the man, but kept his map and note. As they hurried inside the back entrance Eddie considered what the note had said. A safe place in Ohio. If people were traveling all the way from Georgia to reach it, it must've been pretty significant.

Apparently Lilly was thinking the same thing. “So...'Wellington', huh.” She descended the shelves of the back room with their crucial supplies in tow. Eddie grabbed a gnawed cardboard box and filled it with the food they'd hidden on high shelves due to the mice.

“You think it's a real place?” he asked her.

“I don't know.” She dropped an armload of medical supplies into the box he held. “The map seems pretty specific, so it I guess it's likely that it at least exists. Or existed at one point. How safe it really is, though, we don't know.”

He brushed the rest of the food into the box with one swing of his arm. “Wouldn't it be nice if there _was_ a safe place like that, though? Hell, I'd love to be able to stop and take a breath every once in a while without worrying about getting my ass chomped.”

Lilly stuffed the last of their belongings into the box, then folded the flaps shut. “It's a long way from here.”

“I don't have anything better to do.”

Lilly scanned the room for any supplies they'd missed. The place was picked pretty clean. It was funny how quickly supplies ran out when you were a duo instead of a lone survivor.

“You're actually considering this?” she said. “This...'Wellington'?”

“Well, I don't – I mean, maybe. Like you said, we don't know anything about it. But it'd sure as hell be nice to have a safe place as our destination.”

Lilly nodded, though she said nothing in response.

After packing up their remaining supplies, they raided the storefront for anything that could be useful on the road. As expected, Eddie spotted a band of walkers through the window. Though their approach was slow and they were still distant, the swarm was sizable enough to cause some serious damage once they descended upon the building. He warned Lilly that they were coming. She had already noticed them.

“What if Wellington doesn't have walkers?” Eddie asked as they were grabbing up some last-minute supplies.

“I wouldn't set my hopes that high.”

The first walker reached the store quicker than they'd anticipated – it must have emerged from the nearby trees. It began punching the weakened glass of the front window with its dead-weight fists. Small spiderweb cracks formed across the glass' surface.

Lilly hesitated at the rack of women's wool coats, not unlike the one Eddie had procured the first day he'd set foot inside the store. She picked one up and held it for a moment. It was a very dark brown, so dark it could almost be mistaken for black in the poor lighting. She slipped it on over her leather jacket for just a moment. Though it was a bit short, it fit her size-wise. Taking it back off, she draped it over her arm and then grabbed up a pair of gloves and a hat hanging on the rack beside it.

Picking up on Lilly's unspoken message, Eddie began collecting some cold-weather clothing in his size. He was just grabbing a hat more suitable for winter than his ratty beanie when the first walker demolished the glass. It was stopped by the wood and furniture, but surely not for long.

“Okay, get absolutely anything else you need to get _right now_ , and then we've gotta go.” Lilly was right back in command mode.

Eddie snatched up a pair of scarves on the way out. Lilly picked up the cardboard box of supplies they'd compiled, and they hurried out the back entrance. They'd just made it into the RV when a walker appeared around the side of the building.

“This hunk of shit probably won't make it all the way to Ohio,” Lilly said as the RV's tired old engine turned over. “But it'll get us out of _here_.”

Eddie slid the box under the RV's table. He stumbled a bit as Lilly floored it forward. Just like the first time he'd ridden in the vehicle, he held onto the cabinets for balance until he made his way up to the front.

By the time they were out on the road walkers were pouring out of nearby buildings. Lilly navigated the familiar car maze in the road, and left their makeshift former home to disappear behind them.

 


	11. Deep Inside

            Being back on the road again reminded Eddie of how glad he was to have company for the ride. Long car rides by yourself got so boring. And in an apocalypse he couldn't even distract himself with stupid driving games, since there was nobody else on the road.

            The highway was pretty backed up with cars, but Lilly managed to navigate it by driving on the grass islands between guardrails. The already-weakened strips of metal proved no match for the monstrous vehicle. Lilly tore right through them.

            “What if this Wellington place is, like, totally normal?” Eddie tried not to think about it too much, but he couldn't help getting a little excited. “What if it's just like how things used to be, and we can live like we used to?”

            “It won't be like that.” Lilly replied. “As long as the walkers are around and anyone can turn into one, no place with humans will ever be like it was before.”

            “Yeah. I guess that’s true.”

            Lilly focused on the road for a while, saying nothing else to him. Then, after a while, she spoke up.

            “There's something in my backpack.” She nodded to the bag squished in by Eddie's feet. “Open it up.”

            Eddie unzipped the backpack and reached inside. Something hard and smooth immediately met his fingertips at the top of the supply horde. He grabbed it and pulled it out of the bag.

            “Dude!” His well-loved copy of _S.C.I.E.N.C.E._ stared up at him. “You brought my Incubus CD?”

            “I figured it's going to be a long ride. Maybe we could listen to it _quietly_ while we're on the road.”

            Eddie beamed. “Seriously?”

            “ _Very_ quietly. As in so quietly we can barely hear it.”

            Eddie was already pushing the disc into the RV's old, beat-up CD player. “Got it. Quiet.” He turned the volume knob down to almost muted. “What song should we start with?” He never thought he’d be so excited to listen to an album he’d heard a hundred times.

            “Read me the names. I'll pick one.”

            Eddie cleared his throat. “Redefine. Vitamin. New Skin. Idiot Box. Glass. Magic Medicine. A Certain Shade of Green. Favorite Things. Summer Romance. Nebula. Deep Inside. Calgone.”

            Lilly mulled it over. “Play ‘Favorite Things’.”

            “Good choice.” He skipped to track eight. Favorite Things had always been, funny enough, one of his favorite songs on the album.

            He watched Lilly with a stupid grin on his face while the song began to play. She retained that look of complete apathy she wore most of the time she was with him. He'd come to discover that that look was actually a good sign. She only ever seemed to display two different moods – irritated and not irritated. Apathy meant she was not irritated. That was a good thing.

 

_Too bad the things that_

_make you mad_

_are my favorite things_

            He knew every word of the song, and could easily have sung along. But he had a feeling that would shift Lilly into irritated mode. He didn't want that. So he reluctantly refrained.

 

_Remember all the lessons_

_fed to me?_

_Me the young sponge,_

_so ready to agree_

            Lilly wouldn't say one word about the music. Somehow that was even more awkward than their previous silence had been.

 

_Years have gone_

_I recognize the walking dead_

_now aware_

_that I'm alive_

_and way ahead_

 

            “So...” Eddie finally began to press. “What do you think?”

            “I'm listening to it.” she snapped.

            “Whoa, okay.” He backed off.

 

_I see you looking_

_I know that you're thinking_

_that I'll never go anywhere_

_The things that I've done_

_and the things that I've seen_

_I don't really expect you to_

_care_

            When the song eventually ended, Eddie paused the CD and waited eagerly for Lilly's opinion. Lilly just kept driving.

            “So what do you think?” he asked, though his question was really more like a demand.

            Lilly chewed her lip. “Play another one.”

            “Does that mean you like it?” he persisted.

            She glanced over at him for a moment. “If I didn't like it I wouldn't be telling you to play another one.”

            “You couldn't just tell me you liked it?”

            “I thought it was obvious.”

            He leaned over and changed the track to one of his other favorites, New Skin. They drove on down the road with only the quiet music providing any buffer noise between them. Eddie noticed that Lilly seemed to be trying to stay within the lines of the road when she could, but even on parts of the road with no debris she was drifting all over the pavement. She probably shouldn't have been driving. Eddie wasn't about to challenge her.

            “God, I miss my left eye.” she muttered at one point. She over-corrected for her leftward drift and ended up practically in the grass on the side of the road.

            “Well at least you're all right now.” Eddie said.

            Lilly huffed. “I'm hardly all-” She stopped mid-sentence and glanced over at him. “Wait a minute. Was that a fucking pun?”

            Eddie covered his mouth with one hand, not daring to look at her. He stared straight ahead with wide eyes and tried not to let any laughter escape him. That was terrible. He was terrible.

            Lilly stomped on the brake. Eddie slid forward and practically hit the dashboard. “I'll fucking kill you,” she said. Though her words were fierce, they held no genuine malice that Eddie could detect. A pretty typical reaction to a pun as bad and inappropriate as the one he'd just made.

            He pulled his hand away from his mouth and offered her a nervous grin. “Sorry. I couldn't resist.”

            “I'm going to remember this. Next time something bad happens to you I'm going to make a pun about it.”

            He laughed. “Psh. No way you're a punner. It takes years to master that craft.”

            “You won't see it coming.”

            “You might not see it coming, either.”

            “Stop with the fucking eye puns!” She reached over and grabbed him by his leather jacket. “I'll throw you right out of this RV.”

            “Sorry, sorry!” He shrank away from her as much as he could. She gripped him by the collar, nearly pulling him out of his seat. “I'm really sorry,” he squeaked. “I won't do it again.”

            Her fearsome glare dissolved. In its place grew a small, almost mischievous smile. “You're a real pushover sometimes,” she said as she released her grasp on him.

            Eddie found himself breathing a sigh of relief. Part of him had been genuinely afraid she was going to beat him up. “Sometimes?” he asked, his nervous smile returning.

            “Sometimes.” She eased onto the gas pedal, setting the RV in motion once again. “Not all the time. You do step up when it counts.”

            “Yeah? Like when?” He'd always considered himself a complete and utter doormat. He couldn't think of a single example in Lilly's presence, or really ever, where he had “stepped up” and opposed someone walking all over him.

            “You didn't take any shit from me about cleaning out my injury. I know I wasn't the best patient. You probably saved my life by insisting on doing that.”

            “Heh. I guess that is one example.” He hadn't thought about it as anything noteworthy or heroic.  It was just second nature for him to help people. But looking at it from Lilly's perspective, he realized he could have just abandoned her in the Save Lots parking lot. In shock like she was, she would've been devoured by walkers long before she could've come to her senses and fled. Then he would have had everything to himself – the RV, the store, the supplies. He never would have had to worry about her trying to take back what he stole. By the time he got back to the clothing store she'd just be another mindless, half-chewed corpse wandering down the strip.

            “You also made me cut my hair shorter.” she added. “You fought me on it.”

            He tapped his chin. “I did, huh.” Maybe he was a little more assertive than he thought. At least when it mattered.

            Lilly combed her fingers through what remained of her hair, staying focused on the road. “I like the music,” she said.

            Eddie smiled. “I'm glad.”

            Once he knew she liked it, the quiet accompaniment to their drive didn't feel quite so awkward. After she'd strayed from the long road that held their clothing store and Save Lots on its retail strip, Lilly pulled out the map marking Wellington and spread it open on her lap.

            “Wellington is a stretch goal.” she said as she traced the lengthy route with her finger. “If we find somewhere safe on our way there, we'll settle in there instead.”

            “Okay.”

            “And, who knows..” She shrugged her bony shoulders. “Maybe we'll find a place that isn't like this. Maybe some place, somewhere hasn't been totally overrun with dead yet.”

            “There has to be a safe place out there somewhere,” he said. With all the shit humankind had survived through already, this couldn't be the end. It just couldn't be.

            They drove down the long, empty miles of road. Eddie tried not to look out at all the gruesome death and destruction that littered their world.

            “Well,” Lilly spoke up after a thoughtful pause, “Even if we don't find a place that's totally safe, I think we can manage. We've survived this long.”

            He pulled his gaze away from the gory outside. “True. And man, I survived without having anything at all to live for. Now that I've _got_ something...I want to keep living even more.”

            Lilly let a tiny smile hover on her lips for just a moment. “This past week was one of the better ones I've had since this all started. Maybe even the best.”

            “That's not saying much,” he teased.

            “Oh just take the compliment, asshole.”

            He chuckled. “Jesus, complimenting me and insulting me in the same breath – when you put it like that, how could I not be flattered?”

            She refused to look at him. He leaned over and saw that her bashful smile had withered to a wry smirk. She focused only on the road ahead, and would not grant him the satisfaction of flashing that smart-ass look his way.

Before they'd met, Eddie had dreaded long drives in this world. Now he was, just a little bit, looking forward to the perilous journey north. It was going to be dangerous as all hell. But it was going to be exciting, too. And with Lilly meticulously recording their endeavors in her notebook, it almost didn't feel like the trip was unnecessary or pointlessly risky. No matter what happened, someday somebody would (hopefully) read about them and maybe study them. They'd find out the story, from beginning to end, of a couple of lonely survivors coming back from the edge of nothingness to find they still had plenty to give to and receive from others.

            And that story was nowhere near over. In fact, it was just beginning.

 


	12. Calgone (Bonus Chapter)

_[scrawled hastily on dirtied notebook paper]  
_

**_December?, 2003_**

_Encountered another survivor out on the road. I saved him from a swarm of walkers and let him on the RV.  He has a ton of supplies, and seems pretty easily swayed. I'm hoping that bringing him with me on the next Save Lots raid will deter other survivors from screwing with me. A lone survivor is an easy target. If I can convince the other looters I've found a group, they might leave me alone._

_**December?, 2003**_

_The man I saved, his name is Eddie. Or at least that’s what he tells me it is. As I'd guessed, he's pretty acquiescent. I had him doing chores around the store a little while ago. Now we're getting ready to head out._

_He has a sense of humor and a lightheartedness to him that makes him easy to be around. I'm glad for that, because if he proves useful during the Save Lots trip I'm going to be keeping him around as long as possible._

_**December?, 2003**_

_[in shaky handwriting]_

_The Save Lots trip couldn't have gone any worse. I got what I needed, but on the way out we ran across that crazy guy in the blue truck. He pulled his usual creepy shit, and I noticed Eddie was hiding from him. At first I thought he was just being a coward. Then his cover got blown, the man saw him, and suddenly it made sense why he'd been hiding. The guy had something against Eddie. He attacked us like a wild man._

_I got slashed in the eye during the fight. Now it seems my left eye is completely blinded. Despite barely even knowing me, Eddie put his own life in danger to save mine. I must have blacked out shortly after it happened, because I don't remember the ride back._

_I woke up in screaming agony – God, the pain was unbearable. Eddie helped me clean the wound (peroxide for the facial cuts, diluted peroxide for my actual eye), and even though he was insistent, he was so gentle, and kinder than I probably deserve. I can't be too angry with him, though God knows I want to be. Being angry would be better than being miserable. Better than thinking about how I’m probably going to be blind in that eye forever now._

_I asked Eddie why the man attacked him. He told me he'd accidentally killed one of the man's friends. It seemed to be eating at him pretty badly. I told him my story, so now everything's laid bare between us. That's a good thing. It's easier to build trust that way. And I’m pretty sure we’re both starting at a trust level of zero, so we have a long way to go._

_We're smoking together (he'd had some weed in with his supplies). If I wasn't high right now I'd probably have blacked out again. All things considered, it's kind of nice. The plan to use Eddie as a bodyguard at Save Lots may have gone completely off the rails, but I'm almost finding that I just enjoy his company. Or any company. I hated being alone._

_This is the worst part of surviving in this world. Every time I think I've moved past the need for companionship, I end up realizing just how god damn lonely it’s been since I struck out on my own. I used to think being alone would be great – no dissenting opinions, no complaints, no other mouths to feed. But as I spent more and more time by myself, one thing really started to drive me crazy – the silence. You think getting away from all the yelling and fighting of a human group will be nice. But it’s not. It’s horrible._

_Just hearing someone else’s voice is a welcomed change at this point._

_**December?, 2003**_

_Three days since last entry. It's been a long time since I've gone three days without recording my thoughts here. Now that I have someone else to talk to, it's sort of slipped my mind. And I have to say, it's really nice to be able to tell my thoughts to something other than a notebook that can never talk back (well, unless I go really crazy of course)._

_And holy shit, do we ever talk. I knew Eddie liked to yack from day one, but now he's got me talking almost as much as him. It's hard to believe we've only known each other for five days. I guess spending every waking moment with someone will do that to you._

_My eye is healing pretty well. A scar is forming from my forehead down to my cheek where I was slashed. I'm still in pain, and of course I'm still blinded on my left side, but we have enough supplies to stay tucked in the back room for a long while, so it's not as bad as it could be._

_I've come to the decision that as soon as I'm healed enough to go out, I'm going over to the barbershop and cutting my hair. I don't want to do it, but it's for the sake of survival. That man at Save Lots grabbed me by my long hair. I've told myself off and on for months that I should cut it, but that sealed it for me._

_I'm going to try to get back on track with these records. I re-read the last entry and Jesus, it sounds more like a diary entry than a survival log. Actually, now that I re-read the beginning of this log, it sounds like a diary entry too. I'm sure the survivors of the future will want to know some details like that, but from now on I'm going to try to keep the interpersonal details to a minimum._

_**December?, 2003**_

_It's been two days since my last entry, and [something is scribbled out] I wanted to [more scribbled out words] I keep screwing up what I want to say because EDDIE IS READING OVER MY SHOULDER and it's making me nervous. And now he's laughing because he sees me writing this down. Well read this: fuck you, Eddie._

_[in vastly different handwriting] EDDIE IS SO COOL. HE IS ONE AWESOME DUDE. -LILY_

_[an arrow connects the above writing to a box of text in the margin that reads:] This is the last time I leave my notebook unattended with him. And it's LILLY._

_**December?, 2003**_

_I'm actually leaving the store today. My eye is as healed as it's going to get and I need to cut my hair. I'm not exactly happy to do it, but I know I have to. I'm trying to get back into a more serious mindset after basically screwing around for the past week. After all, I'm venturing back out into the harsh and bitter world, and I know that letting my guard down and not taking things seriously will get me killed. It'll get both of us killed._

_I think Eddie can tell I'm trying to be stoic. We've stepped back to where we were before holing up together for a week, the two of us limiting conversation and treading lightly around one another. Once I get back out there I'm going to have to return to pure survivor mode. I'll start reporting on weather conditions and walker density and all those things again. Eddie knows we have to be serious. Or at least I hope he does. I don't enjoy being closed off all the time, either. It's just something we have to do._

_**December?, 2003**_

_We killed a person today. It was a man trying to get into the store. He had a map on him, and a note that talked about some supposedly-safe place called Wellington in northern Ohio. After he damaged the storefront it was only a matter of time until the walkers finished it off. So we collected what supplies we could and took off again in the RV._

_Eddie wants to try for this Wellington. I don't know how I feel about it. The last time I was offered sanctuary it turned out to be a family of fucking cannibals. But this place wasn't offered to us, and I guess that makes it a little different. They're not expecting us._

_I don't know if we're going to make it all the way up to practically Michigan, especially not in this old hunk of junk RV. But it gives us something to aspire toward, rather than just driving aimlessly, so it helps a little._

_Right now Eddie's driving. This is my first time letting him drive the RV, though I know he drove it back from Save Lots when I was unconscious. He seems able to handle it all right._

_I wonder if this Wellington safe place even still exists. Or if it ever existed in the first place. Hell, maybe it is real. Maybe it could be the base of humanity pulling itself back together. I'd like to believe that. But honestly, for whatever we are now, I sort of feel more alive than I ever did in the old world._

_Back then people were digging themselves into a rut, working bland jobs they didn't care about to make ends meet until they died. Now that survivors of this mess have experienced a life much more free and independent, now that some of us have gone a bit...feral, I guess, we might come to realize we like this better than what we had before. Or that, even if we wanted to, some of us might never fully return to being civilized and obedient to things like bosses, laws, and governments._

_Eddie asked me, ‘What if Wellington is just like how things used to be? What if we can live like we used to?’_

_Honestly, if it’s ‘just like how things used to be’ then I don’t know if I want to be there. They’ll probably tie me up like a wild animal, just like my last group. They’ll all sit around and try to decide what to do with me once they figure out that I do what it takes to stay alive in this world._

_It’s not my fault some of us are better adapted to this shit than others._

_God, the more I think this whole thing over, the more I’m considering just getting lost up north and never finding a place like Wellington at all. I don’t need a group. Eddie thinks he does, but he doesn’t. Groups are nothing but problems…_

_This map is pretty faded. Maybe we’ll ‘accidentally’ lose our way next time I’m driving._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, everybody! This chapter marks the end of All I Can Give, but if it isn’t obvious by the huge cliffhanger I’m working on a sequel as we speak. :P The sequel will follow Lilly and Eddie’s journey north, exploring their growing conflict of interests in regard to the kind of survival environment they’re each hoping to find.
> 
> Thanks again!
> 
> Havoka


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